We have a Vsphere 5.1 environment and a V400. I can provide more details on the setup but basically what I am running in to is we have ~400 client vms (win7, xp, win8) that run in the environment. In order to provide a clean client vm for each test instance, when a new test is initiated the client vms are all reverted to the last snapshot (1 snapshot each client vm).
As we scale up I am seeing I/O issues. I have researched and found that snapshots require double (or more) read requests in order to verify integrity in every snapshot on top of the vm. This seems like a nightmare as if we have 300 clients reverting, then boot storming, THEN every time a read request hits a client VM it has to also do double the work and hit the snapshot file also.
I am curious what solutions I could provide on the 3par/SAN side of things? The tests are automated and currently windows server vms use the vcenter API to tell the client vms to revert, boot up, etc. Is there a way I could put this work on the 3par? Get rid of snapshots altogether and be able to provide and present unique "clean" vms to the esxi hosts for their test? I am just curious if anyone has any thoughts on how I can lower the overhead involved with this process. If that includes purchasing additional 3par licenses, etc that is definitely a consideration.
Thank you.