Administrator Guide
20 Dell FS8600 with VMware vSphere Deployment and Configuration Best practices
When setting it to 256, also set the Net.TcpipHeapSize to 32 and Net.TcpipHeapMax to 128. The configuration of these
parameters is done via the ESX host advanced settings.
Note: Changes on Net.TcpipHeapSize and Net.TcpipHeapMax require a host reboot to take effect.
7.3 Configuring NFS Datastores
NFS datastores in FluidFS reside in NAS volumes. These are elastic virtual storage containers used to manage the entire
NAS pool. There are two typical approaches when it comes to the association of NFS datastores with the FluidFS
namespace. The two can coexist in the same solution and they lie in both ends of the simplicity vs. management
granularity axis. The first one consists of accommodating several datastores in a single NAS volume. You can export any
number of folders in a NAS volume and create an NFS datastore in each. Since NAS volumes are also administrative
domains, these datastores not only share storage space boundaries but also have common data management policies.
Multiple datastores in a single NAS volume are useful when you need to categorize VMs in vSphere, without managing
their data separately.
The second approach allocates a dedicated NAS volume for every NFS datastore. This method keeps every datastore
under different space constraints and management policies.
Dell recommends configuring datastores using the vSphere Web Client plugin. The plugin greatly minimizes the effort
involved in the configuration and management of datastores by automating these processes. For more information and
Additional Resources5.
It is an FS8600 best practice to keep NAS volumes with datastores exclusively for storage of virtual machine files.
Create separate NAS volumes for storage of user and application files (See Managing Client Files and Datastores in a
Single File System11).
Dell recommends using NFS3 for the best performance. NFS4.1 will give slower performance on FluidFS, but it adds
some security features. Either NFS3 or NFS4.1 will work with FluidFS, but NFS3 will give better performance in
general.
7.3.1 Manual Creation of NFS Datastores
The association of datastores with NAS volumes is part of the vSphere Web Client plugin datastore wizards. If the
vSphere Web Client is not present, configure the FS8600 NAS volumes as follows:
1. Create NAS volumes destined to be used as datastores and configure them with native UNIX security style.
2. Export the root folder of each NAS volume.