How to Get More Than 8TB of Storage on SoftLayer VMs
“How do I get more than 8TB of storage on my virtual server?” This is a common question I’m asked when talking to potential SoftLayer customers and partners. There are two storage options from which you can choose when ordering a SoftLayer virtual server:
Local storage, which has a smaller maximum capacity of 25GB or 100GB as the first disk, and up to 300GB on the second disk. The maximum space limits are due to the storage being located on the host for the virtual server, which has limited space.
SAN storage, which comes in the same sizes for the first disk as local storage (25GB or 100GB). You can, however, have up to four additional disk drives at 2TB each, totaling up to 8TB.
So far, I’ve only laid out what you already know, but there is a way to get up to 12TB LUNs for your SoftLayer virtual servers by using one of our file or block storage classes: performance and endurance.
Performance is a class of SoftLayer block and file storage that is designed to support high I/O applications requiring predictable levels of performance. This predictable performance is achieved through the allocation of protocol-level IOPS to individual volumes. IOPS ranging from 100 through 6,000 can be provisioned with storage sizes that range from 20GB to 12TB. You select the appropriate storage size and IOPS required during provisioning.
Endurance is available in three IOPS performance tiers to support varying application needs. Note: Once provisioned, you cannot migrate between tiers.
- 00.25 IOPS per GB: Designed for workloads with low I/O intensity. These workloads are typically characterized by having a large percentage of data inactive at a given time. Example applications include storing mailboxes or departmental level file shares.
- 2 IOPS per GB: Designed for most general purpose usage. Example applications include hosting small databases backing web applications or virtual machine disk images for a hypervisor.
- 4 IOPS per GB: Designed for higher-intensity workloads. These workloads are typically characterized by having a high percentage of data active at a given time. Example applications include transactional and other performance-sensitive databases.
The figure below illustrates how the virtual server will utilize the storage. You connect to the machine via the public network and pass through the firewall, which is provisioned separately. The storage is attached to the virtual server via the SoftLayer private network, meaning that storage can only be accessed through the virtual server that has been authorized to use it.
You can find the provisioning guide for block and file storage here. Once your hosts are authorized, you can now connect the virtual server to your block or file storage class. Click here to connect block storage for Windows, here for block storage for Linux, and here for file storage on Linux.
-Kevin O’Shea