In the second of this three-part series, I’ll walk through the initial configuration of the Flash Cluster and prepare for part three which will be the actual test. I didn’t plan to test performance since my lab isn’t exactly built from production gear and I didn’t figure it’d be a fair test. Out of curiosity, I tested anyway, and lets just say that the results are worth sharing after all. But that’s for later. For now, let’s get set up!
Set Up
In the screenshot below, you can see that I’ve allocated a 30 GB SATA SSD to each host. This is what FVP will use for the Flash Cluster we’ll create in a moment. Just wanted to show what we’re working with. For the record, in my lab this is a consumer-grade SSD.
Create a Flash Cluster
A Flash Cluster is the aggregation of local flash devices pooled to accelerate block storage. In the screenshots below, I’ll walk through set up. This was super simple, and in a real world scenario you could walk through this your first time in half an hour. I’m sure professionals do this in about 5 minutes. I love how much focus is going on from vendors lately on simplicity! People don’t want to pay for 8 hours of professional services to get their product up and running! (/rant) Alright, step 1: open the Flash Clusters screen from the vCenter section of the vSphere Client.
[Read more…] about PernixData FVP – Configuration (Part 2 of 3)