Introduction

Storage is an essential component of vSphere design and provides the foundation for the vSphere environment. A solid storage design that addresses capacity, performance, availability, and recoverability is the key to a successful vSphere design. The following diagram displays how a storage design is integrated into the design process:

Several storage options and protocols are supported in a vSphere environment. The architecture chosen for a vSphere deployment depends on the capabilities and features needed to meet the design requirements.

This chapter will cover calculating the storage capacity and performance requirements, sizing datastores, and selecting a storage protocol. The calculations for the recipes in this chapter will be based on the following requirements identified in Chapter 3, The Design Factors:

• There are 100 application servers

• Each application server is configured with 100 GB of disk space. The peak disk capacity usage of a single application server is approximately...