Compression and vDisk | Nutanix Community
Skip to main content
Solved

Compression and vDisk

  • October 8, 2014
  • 2 replies
  • 1103 views

Forum|alt.badge.img+8
Hello -

I am going through the NPP 4.x tutorial and I was wondering if someone can explain to me vDisks in the context below. I guess I don't fully understand what vDisks are.

(Copied from the tutorial):
"If user data for VDI is kept on a vDisk that is attached to the end-user VM, you can store the user data vDisks on a compressed container and the VM vDisks on an uncompressed container."

Thanks in advance.

Best answer by tjagoda

Yep - vDisks means a virtual machine data file, so it would be a VMDK in the case of vSphere. The particular example you're looking at is illustrating that a single virtual machine can have it's VMDK's stored across multiple Nutanix storage containers.

You might have a VMDK with a mostly static OS install on it and a second VMDK full of changing user data - you can more effectively leverage compression and dedupe on the first VMDK so you would want to place that in a Nutanix container with those features enabled. The second VMDK would generate excess computational overhead trying to shrink all that changing data, so placing it in a second Nutanix container with compression/dedupe disabled would be more appropriate - and totally possible with Nutanix.
View original
Did this topic help you find an answer to your question?
This topic has been closed for comments

2 replies

DonnieBrasco
Nutanix Employee
Forum|alt.badge.img+18
  • Nutanix Employee
  • 82 replies
  • October 9, 2014
I think it refers to drives in Windows. One where OS is installed and other drive where user data is stored.

Hope it helps.

-Navpreet

Forum|alt.badge.img+14
  • Trailblazer
  • 30 replies
  • Answer
  • October 9, 2014
Yep - vDisks means a virtual machine data file, so it would be a VMDK in the case of vSphere. The particular example you're looking at is illustrating that a single virtual machine can have it's VMDK's stored across multiple Nutanix storage containers.

You might have a VMDK with a mostly static OS install on it and a second VMDK full of changing user data - you can more effectively leverage compression and dedupe on the first VMDK so you would want to place that in a Nutanix container with those features enabled. The second VMDK would generate excess computational overhead trying to shrink all that changing data, so placing it in a second Nutanix container with compression/dedupe disabled would be more appropriate - and totally possible with Nutanix.