Hi all,
I have vcenter 4.1 with esxi 4.1 hosts running with an EMC array for storage. In order to get my customer out of a jam, we have given them more storage on the fly by 1st growing the LUN, and then growing the datastore following kb http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1017662 without any downtime. Of course they were thrilled...high fives and back patting had by all.
Unfortunately now (not surprisingly) they know of this availability and they find it commonplace to grow a datastore should the need arise. They fail to project growth over a year because they know it can grow anytime which leads to more unnecessary time to for me and my team to help them. My pleas for them to continue to project has fallen on deaf ears. Since they are a customer there is little muscle I have.
Even though this is available I am of the opinion to not mess with the storage/partitions/etc unless absolutely necessary. I just don't feel comfortable with the fact that we change sizes of these LUNs and datastores like we change underwear. Maybe I'm too cautious? Getting overly paranoid in my old age? I'd love to know what the opinion of the community is. I am not a SAN admin so I don't really know the affect from the SAN side and metadata and all that stuff...I just know that the LUNs are expandable. Is there no limit and risk to expanding LUNs and datastores? I've searched but haven't found any kb or tech data to support my theory so maybe I am being too cautious?
Oh before you ask, no I can't assign 2TB LUNs from the start...the storage is assigned to SQL VM server log and transaction partitions and they keep adding databases to it and running out of space so we keep adding as necessary. I don't really care if I extend one datastore and that's it. My concern is they keep asking for the same datastores to be expanded. I have grown the same ones 4 or 5 times now and I don't see it stopping. Please let me know your 2 cents!!