HP LeftHand SAN Solutions Support Document - User Manual - User Manual VSA 7.0 SP1 for VMware

Chapter: Designing A Virtual SAN 13
again avoiding resource contention with the virtual SAN. For example, a
platform with 10GB of RAM could host a VSA and use 8GB of memory to
share for other VMs.
Controllers and Hard Drives
The internal disk controller and actual hard disk drives of a platform affect
the capacity and IO performance of the VSA. Ideally VSAs should use storage
that is hosted by many SAS or SCSI drives. If you are designing a new server
that will host VSAs, you should
• Use as many hard drives as the platform will allow and prefer faster
rotation speeds. The more hard drives and the faster their rotation speed,
the more IOPS, and better performance.
• Select controllers with protected cache.
Changing the Disk Size on the SAN
Use the VI Client if you want to change the disk size of a VSA that is currently
in your LeftHand SAN.
You must follow these steps in the sequence listed or the VSA will be unable to
participate in a management group.
1 Remove the VSA from the management group.
2 Using the VI Client, power off the VSA.
3 Select the VSA and select Edit Settings to open the Virtual Machine
Properties window.
4 Select the Hard Disk that is on the port SCSI 1:0 and click Remove.
5 Click Add and use the Add Hardware Wizard to add a new hard disk of the
desired size to port SCSI 1:0.
See detailed instructions in the section “Configure a data disk” in the VSA
Quick Start Guide, installed in the Documentation directory with the
Centralized Management Console files.
6 Power on the VSA.
7 In the Centralized Management Console, reconfigure RAID.
8 Add the VSA to a new or existing management group and cluster.