NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices

13 VIRTUAL MACHINE STORAGE LAYOUT
13.1 DEFAULT VIRTUAL MACHINE LAYOUT
When a virtual machine is provisioned the VMware administrator must select a datastore to store the files
that comprise the VM. The directory that is created is referred to as the VM home directory. By default all of
the files for a single VM will reside in the VM home directory. The contents of the home directory include, but
are not limited to, the VM’s configuration file, virtual disk and virtual disk descriptor files, virtual swapfile,
snapshot files, NVRAM, and so on.
From the standpoint of simplicity, this design works well where a VM home directory is a virtual machine.
See Figure 48 for a high-level conceptual view of this layout.
Figure 48) VMware’s default virtual machine and vswap layout.
13.2 VIRTUAL MACHINE LAYOUT WITH NETAPP SNAP* TECHNOLOGIES
In this section we will review a data layout design which is recommended when integrating VMware with
NetApp snap* technologies such as SnapManager Snapshot backups or disk-to-disk replication using
SnapMirror and/or SnapVault. In these use case scenarios NetApp recommends separating transient and
temporary data from the production data by implementing architecture that separates these two data types
into multiple datastores.
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