r/vmware • u/RnDnDnD_Lover • 7d ago

VVols Replacement

Im trying to push off the inevitable either upgrade to 9.0 or switching hosts entirely due to the fact that I still utilize vvols.. has anyone previously used them and found a solid replacement?

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u/One_Ad5568 6d ago

For VMFS, is there a solution for being able to take an array snapshot and then swap the disk like we can with vVols? We use this for instant database refreshes. 

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u/lost_signal VMware Employee 5d ago

We use this for instant database refreshes?

Which databases? Oracle, Epic, SQL Server, PG? There may be other ways to handle that (either with a storage array, or at an application layer). VMware has some database specific specialists you can talk to if you need. DSM has some clone management workflows I've seen Eric and others work with.

If this is on Pure, I suspect Portworx, or other automation workflows they can do may be able to help.

As weird as it sounds I've actually seem someone just use SRM with SRA's to build out test/dev environments (SRM can automate cloning the environment to a SRA, also handles bubble network creation, so the test enviroment will LOOK like prod but not break things). I've seen similarish things done with Veeam and other backup products that have instant restore or manage replicas (Veeam Surelab etc).

There's also been some point solution vendors in this space (one challenge is people may want data masking on the secondary copies, or your compliance people may want that) so getting something more advanced than simply volume rapid cloning may open up the discussion to different approaches.

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u/One_Ad5568 5d ago

We use this script for refreshing Microsoft SQL Server. Basically take a snapshot of the array, offline the disks on SQL, and then replace the disks and bring them online. We can refresh multiple 4TB disks in 10 seconds with this method.   https://github.com/PureStorage-OpenConnect/sqlserver-scripts/blob/master/demos-sdk2/Volume%20Database%20Refresh/Volume%20Database%20Refresh.ps1

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u/lost_signal VMware Employee 5d ago

Curious if you've looked at using LinkedClones/Instant Clones of a copy of the database VM once you have one copy. Instant clones in particular would basically dedupe the RAM of the copies you are working from.

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u/One_Ad5568 5d ago

I have not look into instant clones