I have some questions about implementing datastore clusters and Storage SRS in VSphere 5.1.
We have a datacenter with about 15 HP blades and a few non-blade servers. The hosts are all either VSphere 5.0 or 5.1. Our back end storage is an EMC VNX 5700 with about 20 datastores. All the VMWare is managed by VCenter 5.1 running on a dedicated physical machine.
Currently, each datastore is used individually; no datastore clusters are set up. When a new VM is created, the admin typically picks the data store with the most space. Periodically, we go back and manually storage vMotion the machines to balance the load.
We recently expanded the VNX storage, so we now have LUN's in different pools, with different performance levels.
What I'd like to do is set up datastore clusters, so that we when a VM is created, the admin doesn't have to know which datastore is in which pool. Also take advantage of the storage DRS so that the storage load will "tune" itself somewhat.
I know setting up a storage cluster in a "clean" environment is pretty simple, but my concern is creating/converting existing active production datastores into the cluster, while they're being used.
If I go into the "datastores and datastore clusters" screen, right click on the data center and create a cluster, then move various datastores into the new cluster, will there be any interruption in the running production systems?
I'm also wondering about enabling Storage IO Control. It's currently not enabled on the datastores. I know it's helpful for the StorageDRS, but will enabling it have any negative effects on the system? If I do enable it on the datastores, is there anything I should do or set besides just enabling it?
Lastly, we're in the process of setting up Site Recovery Manager. Does SRS have any impact on the configuration of datastore clusters and SDRS?
Thanks in advance for any comments.
Mike O.