Long before I left VMware for EMC I was writing articles on storage issues that were punishing virtual machine performance. As a member of VMware’s performance marketing, I spent an inordinate amount of time asking people to first check their storage to fix performance problems. While those efforts bore fruit in VMware’s more mature customers, the majority of new customers first blamed vSphere for performance problems. Storage issues went undiagnosed.
Educating VI administrators on storage troubleshooting and capacity management is a tactical fix to this problem. In the past year I realized that storage mismanagement in virtual environments is a systemic problem that is mainly experienced customers with immature VMware deployments. A solution to this systemic problem requires a more holistic view.