Non-ESX Datastore Workload

The non-ESX datastore workload alarm signifies that anon-ESX workload has been detected on the datastore. This event indicates that an external I/O activity is detected on the VMware host. In some cases, this external usage can negatively impact Oracle VMware and SQL Server VMware functionality by competing with and slowing down vSphere operations.

Definition

A non-ESX datastore workload occurs when the storage I/O (SIOC) control detects workloads from outside sources that are not being managed by SIOC. This situation often results in congestion on SIOC datastores.

There are four specific situations that a non-ESX datastore event within VMware. They are:

  1. An unsupported configuration is running on the VMware host. This may include:
    • A host(s) is running aVMware ESX version older than 4.1.
    • A host(s) is not being managed by vCenter.
    • vCenter Server is not managing all of the hosts.
    • The datastore housing the storage media is located are shared with other datastores that are not SIOC enabled.
    • Configured datastores have multiple extents.
  2. System operations like replication or RAID reconstruction are being executed by the storage array.
  3. Data protection APIs like VMware Consolidated Backup or vStorage APIs are accessing a snapshot on the datastore for backup purposes.
  4. Non-vShere workload volumes share the storage media (spindles, SSD) on which this datastore is located.

Solution

The main solution to this issue is to ensure that you are running a supported VMware vCenter configuration.

Confio IgniteVM

Confio IgniteVM helps identify the impact of the non-ESX datastore workload alarm for sites running Oracle on VMware, SQL Server on VMware, and other virtual databases. IgniteVM helps DBAs maintain performance and availability on virtual servers. IgniteVM is the only virtualization-aware database monitoring solution.

Learn more about IgniteVM solutions for: