vSphere 5 vReference Card released

Forbes Guthrie has released the vSphere 5 version of his vReference Card.  Forbes has added a full page version of the PDF for easier reading.  I have copied to my iBooks library on my iPad for handy reference.

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Virtualized Exchange Storage: VMDK or RDM or…?

One of the hottest topics I get into when talking to customers about virtualizing Exchange is storage. Not surprising considering the number of options available when we virtualize Exchange on vSphere. If you are not familiar with the common methods for provisioning storage in vSphere a brief description of each follows:

• VMFS based virtual disk (VMDK) – VMFS is a high performance, clustered file system that allows concurrent access by multiple hosts to files on a shared volume. VMFS offers high I/O capabilities for virtual machines and is optimized for large VMDK files. VMFS volumes can be Fibre Channel or iSCSI attached.
• Raw-device mappings (RDM) – RDM is a mapping file in a VMFS volume that acts as a proxy for a raw physical device, sometimes called a pass-thru disk. The RDM file contains metadata used to manage and redirect disk access to the physical device. RDMs can be Fibre Channel or iSCSI attached.

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