Users Guide

Storage Solutions Guide 31
The information in this section is meant to help you understand the space
that will be utilized for your virtual machines. The worksheet below can be
utilized for each VM in your solution.
When determining the appropriate storage to provision for a VM, there are
two major factors to consider:
• In which category of I/O utilization is each component classified (light,
medium, or heavy)?
For your purposes, placing multiple components on the same disk may be
necessary; however, if your VM is I/O intensive, the components that are
accessed frequently (log files, page file, etc.) should reside on their own
unique LUN. The disks should then be attached to their own synthetic
SCSI controller. Because Hyper-V supports a maximum of four synthetic
SCSI controllers, some synthetic SCSI controllers may require more than
one SCSI disk attached to them. Careful planning is required for I/O
intense VMs to balance the I/O utilization across the controllers.
• Does the storage space required on a single disk exceed 2 TB?
VHD size is limited to less than 2 TB. If this is a factor in your
configuration, a passthrough disk may be more appropriate or the data
must be split across multiple VHDs.
Component Notes
Guest OS Base Image Size:_______
The guest OS will reside on the boot IDE
device of the VM.
Guest OS Page File Size:_________
Recommended size is 1.5 times the amount of
RAM allocated to the VM.
VM Files: _____________________
Includes VM configuration, device state, and
memory (XML, VSV, and BIN) files. The size
allocated should be 200 MB plus the size of
VM memory.
Guest OS Additional Storage:_____
Additional storage is required for applications,
application data, log files, etc. It is
recommended that you place the data drives
on a dedicated LUN and present them to the
VM as a synthetic SCSI device that likewise
resides on its own SCSI controller.