In the previous post I’ve consider the cases and scenarios of a “non supported” configurations. But what’s happen with “supported” configurations? Are they always working and always in the best way? A supported configuration means that it can work well, but in specific situations, cases, scenarios.
Usually a good rule could be make a good analysis and a good virtual design before choose the single pieces. A supported configuration does not mean that also meets requirements like availability, scalability and performance. For example there are a lot of entry storage that are VMware certified, but they does not meet any of the previous requirements. This could be a simple example of a wrong design that is “too low”, but it’s funny that there are also example of wrong design that are “too high”. In some cases I’ve seen that a FC storage based solution was used in small environment only because the customer (or the consultant) was not confinded with an iSCSI or NFS (but still enterprise) solution.
So you have to apply the supported configurations to your environments, your requirements and your constrains.
Other points to consider for “supported” configurations are:
- If is supported for one version (for example vSphere 4.1) does not mean that is supported for sure also for greater versions (like vSphere 5.o) or previous versions (like vSphere 4.0).
- Could be supported, but you need to apply (documented) patches or specific configurations to make it work. This is, for example, the case of Dell PowerVault MD3600/MD3600i storage on vSphere 4.1.
- There could be some (rare) cases where VMware does not support, but the vendor does. For example some some cards (where the vendor my provide specific drivers).