I would like to create an easy way for a Guest OS to be able to expand its storage.
The issues are this:
1. If I give a VM a virtual disk, I can increase virtual disk size when the VM runs out of storage. I can add a virtual disk if needed. In this case I can vmotion or storage vmotion the VM without any interruptions.
2. Or, I can present an NFS Mount from an NFS server such as a NetApp NAS to the guest OS, and have the guest OS mount it.
When that mount runs out of space, I can increase the size of the mount on the NetApp filer without having to modifiy anything on the vm such as virtual disk size or partition size, and there is no outage required for the vm.
That is an advantage because I don't have to try to resize the virtual disk and then resize the guest OS partition and all that is involved.
However of course this would impact applicatoins that had to access that storage, especially during things like vmotion.
What are all the pros and cons of both strategies?
Has anyone used the second strategy and in what use cases has it been found to work successfully and be adventageous?