EMC CX500 and ESX4 HCL - can anyone close to EMC comment?

[LiamCurtis]

Hello all,

Would very much like to run ESX4 on our cx500. I do realize that it is EOL, but end of service life is not until 2011. I was wondering if anyone knew if EMC had plans to certify the CX300-400-500,etc on ESX4? I really hate subscribing to the EMC forklift upgrade every 2 years and the CX500 is still a viable unit, in my eyes.

Anyone have any hunches, tips, or info if EMC is planning this?

thnx

[glynnd1]

Liam, I suggest opening a support request with EMC to get better visibility. But if it already EOL'd then it might not make a difference. :smileysad:

[GTPerry]

I installed the Navisphere agent on my ESX 4.0 (Vsphere 4.0) system, and it does recognize the luns on my EMC CX600 and so far works fine.

:smileyhappy: At first, it wasn't working, but was due to a configuration problem on my side.

Message was edited by: GTPerry

[LiamCurtis]

Weird...It has been running no probs for me thus far on the cx500, but I am nervous about 'best-effort only' support. Supposedly you don't need to install navi-agent for ESX4:

emc217063

The Navisphere Host Agent is not required vSphere 4.0 (also referred to as ESX 4.0). With these versions of VMware the native multipathing driver performs a registration "push" down all paths at each boot. With this functionality, no host agent or manual registration is required.

[GTPerry]

oh good, i'll try it without installing the agent.

[whynotq]

I've installed vSphere 4 and it registers without any agent needed, done this on AX4-5 with flare 23 and CX4-120 with flare 28. I see know reason why a CX500 wouldn't work with vSphere but doubt that it will be officially certified due to the EOL of the cx500, however, so long as you run the latest flare 26 code i doubt that you would have any difficulty with support or functionality.

[korman]

I have had an upgrade project on hold for months because of HCL for CX300 and CX500. I have about 40 TB of Lab storage on 3 CX300s and 1 CX500. All vmfs.

My concerns are with unknowns concerning SCSI-3 dependencies with the vSphere 4.1 Hypervisor which I believe there is no support for in the latest CX300 and CX500 flare.

I am not concerned about not being supported.. just concerned about risk of corruption on my vmware datastores.

[HungryMind1200]

Hello, I am attempting to integrate ESX4 with an existing Dell EMC CX600. My ESX HBAs (QLOGIC QLE2460s) are connected to redundant 16-port (only 8 ports enabled), McData Sphereon 4400 FC switches. My first problem is that I cannot access the first McData switch. I am seeking documentation from my customer in the hopes to reset this switch back to factory defaults and rebuild the configs. That's neither here nor there. My primary concern is that when I rescan my HBAs within ESX, I do not see any LUNS. I also cannot add the ESX server to my list of hosts within the SANS navisphere mgmt GUI. I've read that even though this SAN is end of life, there are users out there running ESX 4 with it. I've also read that I shouldn't need to install the navisphere agent into the ESX service console. Can anybody steer me in the right direction? I don't have any zones configured for the new ESX hosts. Is that a requirement? Pardon my ignorance, I am not very experienced working with fibre channel. Any insight is appreciated. What could I be doing wrong? Thank you.