Tagged Questions

0
votes
0answers
45 views

P2000 G3 for VMware - one vDisk, Multiple RAID levels?

I have a dual controller P2000 G3 (SAS 6GB) hooked up to 3 ESXi hosts. There are 12x 600GB 15k rpm drives total, and I have set them up in 1 RAID10 vDisk to maximize performance+reliability. The ...
2
votes
4answers
232 views

iSCSI SAN for vCenter Cluster

I'm looking to setup a SAN for a VMWare vCenter cluster of ESX hosts. I'd like it to be the primary storage device for VMs. There will be up to 10 hosts in the cluster eventually. I'm creating a ...
1
vote
1answer
78 views

Benefits of SR-IOV when most communications are between guest VMs

I am about to buy a new server to run VWware ESXi (Dell T320 w/25GB + RAID10). It will mainly be running a Linux host running web applications and a Windows file/database server. I plan to use AWS ...
1
vote
2answers
405 views

What does this mean: “SATP VMW_SATP_LOCAL does not support device configuration”?

Can anyone tell me what this means in ESXi 5.1?: SATP VMW_SATP_LOCAL does not support device configuration I've googled it and I get a lot of results, but as yet all the pages that contain the ...
6
votes
2answers
268 views

links between switches for iSCSI

We inherited a SAN/vmWare/iSCSI setup with both Dell and HP equipment purchased for it, but not fully setup, and we need to get some additional switches to make it all work. But we're getting ...
2
votes
1answer
869 views

How do physical disks passed through ESXi perform vs. passing through HBAs?

Context: I have a SAN operating system (Nexenta) that runs on ESXi. It has a couple of HBAs passed through to it already, via VT-d. All of the HBAs for the SAN OS are full (no free connectors). I ...
-2
votes
1answer
691 views

Dell EqualLogic vs. EMC VNXe [closed]

We've been looking into SMB SANs and based on the competitive pricing I've been getting we're really liking these two array's. There are some pro's to both solutions, but I've unable to really decide ...
1
vote
1answer
851 views

vSphere 5/Dell MD3000i multipathing configuration clarification

Revisiting an older vSphere setup with two Dell 1950s, 4 NICs per host: esxi1 and esxi2 for simplicity sake. SAN is a Dell MD3000i, two controllers, two NICs per controller: rc00 and rc01; rc10 ...
1
vote
1answer
245 views

virtual san appliance in esxi? why?

I am looking at different SAN solutions (Starwind, Lefthand, OpenFiler, OpenSolaris, etc.) for my small office and I understand that there are many virtual SAN appliance (VSA) solutions which can be ...
5
votes
1answer
807 views

Esxi with iSCSI SAN slows down with many multiple VMs running

I have a server with ESXi 5 and iSCSI attached network storage(4x1Tb Raid-Z on freenas). Those two machines are connected to each other with Gigabit ethernet, and a procurve switch in between. After ...
3
votes
5answers
1k views

Would using SAS disks instead of SATA disks make sense over NFS for a VMWare datastore?

We are deciding whether to use SATA or SAS aggregates on our Filer for our VMWare datastore. We will be using NFS to connect the VMWare hosts to storage. Doesn't seem to make sense to use SAS disks ...
-1
votes
3answers
191 views

Infrastructure Storage Recommendations: Backing up a SAN with VMs [closed]

We are going to be moving our current physical server infrastructure to a VMware solution with 3 nodes (The Essentials Plus Kit). I need recommendations for storage. From what I've read, an iSCSI SAN ...
-1
votes
1answer
122 views

Connecting a Hypervisor to a SAN [closed]

This is a hypothetical scenario for my college project. I am wondering what way to physically connect a VMWare ESXi 5 server to a SAN server. In my scenario both computers have gigabit NIC's using ...
1
vote
2answers
2k views

How to check fiber connectivity in ESXi 5.0?

On a VMware ESXi 5.0 host, how can I check if fiber storage adapters are properly connected to the fiber switch/SAN, i.e. if the fiber link is up?
3
votes
2answers
432 views

RAID10 volume write latency on Windows on ESXi 5

I have a VMware ESXi 5 environment running on Fujitsu BX922S2 blade servers, connecting to a Fujitsu DX90 SAN. I've had no problem with RAID5 volumes, but RAID10 volumes (for MSSQL) are exhibiting ...
2
votes
1answer
891 views

Data Store/Volume disconnecting. How to resume copy of VMDK?

I'm having an issue with my ESXi 4.1 hosts losing the datastore with FC SAN after a power outage. All 3 hosts disconnect so it's definitely a SAN issue. I've tried to resolve the issue on the SAN side ...
7
votes
6answers
17k views

VMware VMFS5 and LUN sizing - multiple smaller datastores, or 1 big datastore?

With VMFS5 no longer having the 2TB limit for a VMFS volume, I'm considering which scenario would be more beneficial overall:- Less LUNs of larger size, or More LUNs of smaller size. In my case, I ...
1
vote
3answers
453 views

SAN Distro with iSCSI and software RAID 5 [closed]

Im looking for an OS, to install on a server, which has 4x 1Tb disks. Id like to couple those disks as an RAID-5 array, and share it over iSCSI to VMWare ESXi 5. Im not sure if this exists... I have ...
1
vote
2answers
955 views

Gracefully Shutdown an Equalogic SAN

Like many others I have jumped on the VMware bandwagon. We are hosting all of our data on an Equalogic SAN and need a "gracefull" way to shut down the VMs and the SAN if the battery backups reach a ...
3
votes
1answer
685 views

HP LeftHand vs VMware VSA

I am trying to compare VMware's new VSA with the HP LeftHand VSA. Both products allow you to run the SAN node as a VM. Reading VMware's documentation I get the impression that VMs on the same host ...
3
votes
2answers
252 views

Fiber Channel SAN hooked up to 2 ESXi Hosts

I have a PowerVault with 4 FC modules at 8gb/s. I don't want to jack the SAN into our 10/100/1000 switch because of the max 1gb/s speed. My question is can I jack both ESXi host's FC into the SAN's ...
0
votes
1answer
2k views

EqualLogic vs. PowerVault [closed]

Alright, looking at SAN options. We have a vendor we're working with, and they're obviously pushing EqualLogic hard. They just released the 4100 series which is a bit nicer, and they're trying to get ...
0
votes
1answer
161 views

ESX Server not seeing ISCSI Device for connection to HP Lefthand SAN Array

I have an ESX server array that I had connected to four HP SAN boxes. Unfortunately, HP only sent me three certificates (and I lost track) so it was running with only 3 of the 4 boxes cert'ed. I have ...
3
votes
3answers
913 views

DAS or NAS for VMware?

I am going to be implmenting a VMware vSphere 4 setup in our company. At first I had the plans of using a Netgear ReadyNAS business applicance for VM storage via iSCSI. But as I was looking around for ...
3
votes
3answers
832 views

To LAG or not LAG?

I have a new ex4200 switch stack, my 3 esxi hyper-visors connect to the SAN via vlan 200 which is EST. I have loaded the Equallogic multipathing plugins. When I have the 4 cables per server dedicated ...
5
votes
3answers
666 views

Design Critique Needed ( VLAN & ESXi )

So this is my new "project" which consists of tearing down our legacy network and re-doing it correctly. As of now it is a mess. Production is a hogpoge of legacy servers that should have been put to ...
3
votes
4answers
739 views

Using a server as an iSCSI SAN for VMWare?

I've currently got 3 ESXi servers (free version), using direct attached storage. I want to move to shared storage, because direct storage is very limiting. There are about a dozen VMs, most are fairly ...
0
votes
1answer
588 views

Would FreeNAS with RAID-6/10/50 work well with VMWare ESXi?

I am considering expanding my single ESXi server set-up with a SAN and another ESXi server, because I am planning to update the Windows Server 2003 virtual machines to Windows Server 2008. The servers ...
1
vote
1answer
823 views

Vmware ESXi 4.1 iSCSI MPIO - What is wrong with these steps?

I'm trying to add another vm host to our SAN and I don't have good notes on how I got this working last time. (dumb mistake) I've pieced my steps together from a script I had for our production ...
0
votes
1answer
1k views

How to set up FCoE target under Ubuntu?

We have: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS installed MegaRAID controller with 2 virtual RAID10 drives. 2x 10GbE dual port adapters (Supermicro AOC-STGN-I2S aka Intel 82599) We need to make those Megaraid drives ...
0
votes
2answers
294 views

How to share a disk to ESX from Windows to ESXi using FCoE?

I have Windows7 and I need to share it's disks to neighbouring ESXi server. I want to use FCoE. How to? Reason for using FCoE: Which storage protocol to use for ESX storage? EDIT: The NICs are ...
0
votes
1answer
235 views

Convert EMC AX150 to iSCSI?

I've to an EMC AX150 SAN, with two FC controllers in it. And no existing FC infrastructure. Since the controller cards seem to be modular (you can get 1 or 2 of them), is it possible to obtain iSCSI ...
1
vote
3answers
618 views

How do I present a very large disk to a windows VM?

Equipment: - EVA 4400 storage system - ESXi 4.1 hosts managed via Virtual Centre - Windows Server 2K3 R2 64bit Enterprise Edition VMs Goal: - Have a very large volume that is used for on-disk ...
1
vote
2answers
322 views

VMware vsphere essentials plus network cabling

I'm not sure how many NICs I need to use to have vmotion support with my SAN. See the link for a picture, it's laughably crude. Sketch
1
vote
1answer
981 views

Help with proposed iSCSI SAN VMware implementation

We have four (with plans to grow to four more) Dell servers with 6 NICs. They are running VMware ESXi 4.1. We would like to connect all of them to an Openfiler iSCSI SAN via HP ProCurve 1810G ...
3
votes
4answers
417 views

SAN over Ethernet

We are looking to move our infrastructure from our office to a COLO. Currently we run a rack-mount white-box server using commodity hardware, and ESXi 4 as the hypervisor to power 9 VM's for internal ...
1
vote
1answer
1k views

Utilizing greater than 2 TB unformatted LUN in the local ESXi datastore

I'm about to create a very large file system for Windows Server and client to use (NTFS), by using Openfiler as the iSCSI initiator.[using any other free appliance will also be considered] Can ...
3
votes
4answers
4k views

SAN choices for two server ESXi 4.0 cluster with vMotion and HA

I'm planning to move two separate vmware ESXi 4.0 hosts into a cluster to use the vMotion and HA capabilities of ESXi (essentials plus). Right now we have a dev vm host and a production vm host and ...
3
votes
2answers
3k views

ESXi Accessing LUNs: Physical or Virtual Mode?

I'm building VMs in my lab and I want to replicate the situation that my fileservers will be encountering in production. Here's a brief overview of what I want to do. I have multiple ESXi 4 servers. ...
1
vote
3answers
198 views

HP server delayed boot

I'm currently using HP Proliant DL120 G5 servers running VMWare ESXi 4 to run server VM's. They are connecting to an iSCSI SAN for the shared storage. I'd like to implement a delayed boot of these ...
0
votes
1answer
231 views

Small Business HP Virtualisation and iSCSI SAN Options

We are a small business that hosts our core product on a number of HP servers. Our core production setup is 1x HP DL380, high powered for a SQL Server Database 1x HP DL360, mid powered for our core ...
8
votes
6answers
2k views

What are the most important aspects to consider when choosing a SAN for a small office virtualization project?

I am in the process of consolidating 6 physical servers running 6 different operating system flavors (don't ask) into two identical physical servers (Dell PowerEdge 2900), using the free VMware ESXi ...
1
vote
1answer
883 views

VMWare Raw Device Mapping Not Working

While I'm waiting for VMWare support to get back to me, I thought I'd ask here. I have a 400 gig LUN presented from a fiber channel SAN to my VMWare host. It's legacy from another virtualization ...
15
votes
5answers
2k views

Best Practices for virtualizing servers onto the SAN?

Alright, so I want to start leveraging my SAN a little more than I have been, and at the same time, take advantage of ESXi. Currently, I've got an array of Dell PowerEdge 1955 blades connected to a ...
21
votes
8answers
5k views

What kind of storage do people actually use for VMware ESX servers?

VMware and many network evangelists try to tell you that sophisticated (=expensive) fiber SANs are the "only" storage option for VMware ESX and ESXi servers. Well, yes, of course. Using a SAN is fast, ...