VMworld 2012 session voting is open, and I'd love it if you voted for my session (1604- vSphere Storage Connectivity Best Practices for Performance and Availability).

That said, I don't expect you to vote for it just based on my winning personality, so here is a quick rundown on the session:

Summary

There are many common misconceptions around storage networking for both Fibrechannel and IP. These misconceptions lead to bad design, and these bad designs lead to poor performance and lower availability. We will review real-world examples of these designs and discuss what the architect intended and what the actual outcome was. We will educate you on all the advantages and limitations of different configurations and arm you with the knowledge so you can make a well-informed design that works best for your environment, including protocols, multipathing, link aggregation, and more.

Three Key Takeaways

• More wires don’t always mean more performance- some of the accepted ‘truths’ about storage networking are pure fiction.
• There is no ‘right’ storage protocol for vSphere- they all have their pluses and minuses. Get educated on all of them and select the one that makes the most sense for your environment
• Storage connectivity for vSphere is not a black art- with a good understanding of how it all works, it can be easy for any VMware or storage administrator.

 Conclusion

All the pieces are there to build a scalable and reliable storage network, no matter what your protocol is. The key is understanding how they work and what are sound design principles to follow.