10.4. Storage Domain Limitations
Storage domains provide space for the storage of virtual machine disk images and ISO images as well as the import and export of virtual machines. While many storage domains may be created within a given data center, there are a number of limitations and recommendations that apply to each storage domain.
Table 10.2. Storage Domain Limitations
| Item | Limitations |
|---|---|
| Storage Types |
Supported storage types are:
Legacy FCP or iSCSI export storage domains from Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2 environments are no longer supported. New ISO and export storage domains in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.6 can be provided by any file-based storage (NFS, Posix or GlusterFS).
|
| Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs) | No more than 300 LUNs are permitted for each storage domain that is provided by iSCSI or FCP. |
| Logical Volumes (LVs) |
In Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, logical volumes represent virtual disks for virtual machines, templates, and virtual machine snapshots.
No more than 350 logical volumes are recommended for each storage domain that is provided by iSCSI or FCP. If the number of logical volumes in a given storage domain exceeds this number, splitting available storage into separate storage domains with no more than 350 logical volumes each is recommended.
The root cause of this limitation is the size of LVM metadata. As the number of logical volumes increases, the LVM metadata associated with those logical volumes also increases. When this metadata exceeds 1 MB in size, the performance of provisioning operations such as creating new disks or snapshots decreases, and lvextend operations for thinly provisioning a logical volume when running a QCOW disk take longer to run.
Further detail about logical volumes is available in https://access.redhat.com/solutions/441203.
|
Note
Further information about storage domains is available in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Administration Guide.
