A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark. In addition, a “best” practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered.

But, as well described by Frank Denneman in his post, best practices are never absolute, they depends on your specific case.

One good example is in the storage part of a virtualization solution: VMware guides (but also other virtualization vendor) define some good practices, but storage vendors may define other more specific. In this case, usually, you must follow the practices of your storage vendor.

And note that most of them could be different from each other: to make a simple example, in iSCSI solutions, some vendor require a single iSCSI network, other more networks (like a switched fabric solution in FC world).

For a list of most storage vendor best practices (updated to vSphere 5) see this good post: Storage Best Practices from different vendors on VMware vSphere.

Andrea Mauro

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.