ESXi

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  • 1.  iSCSI port binding

    Posted May 25, 2017 01:14 PM

    I came across with a VMware iSCSI connectivity guide as on the link below

    https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2038869

    This made me to think whether we are using the best practice in our ESXi host’s setup, in particular the use of port binding.

    On the storage, we have two iSCSI subnets and each is in separate VLAN (i.e.: each port0 on both SP-A and SP-B are on VLAN1 and port1 on both SP-A and SP-B are on VLAN2). We have four paths to the storage.

    On the ESXi hosts, we have 2x10GbE nic in a single vDS with separate port group for iSCSI storage. Each port group is in a separate VLAN with one active nic and one unused nic. We are using hardware-assisted iSCSI (TOE) initiator. The iSCSI initiators are connected to the storage using static connectivity (i.e. Initiator on portgroup1 connects to SP-A and SP-B on VLAN1 etc.).

    I have two questions to address.

    1. Will the ESXi host be disconnected from the storage if I remove the port binding?
    2. Do I have to have dynamic connection instead of static?


  • 2.  RE: iSCSI port binding

    Posted May 26, 2017 07:03 PM

    As I understand you .......... If you have Storage port binding then the chosen NIC's are only talking to the SAN .... if you remove NIC's from the port group or want to do away with SAN connection then ESXi will be ok however there will dead paths and the storage will be gone from that esxi ..... be careful here

    I have always been doing Port binding with Dynamic Port ..... why do you want to do away with dynamic binding --- what is that you are trying to achieve



  • 3.  RE: iSCSI port binding

    Posted May 30, 2017 09:37 AM

    If you remove the VMkernel interfaces from the port binding configuration, the iSCSI connections will disconnect and reconnect to the LUN.

    The use of dynamic or static binding depends on your configuration. If you use dynamic binding all available network interfaces on the storage system will be used to connect to. If you do not want to connect to all network interfaces you will need to use static binding. If it is possible on the storage system to restrict the available network interfaces to be seen by the hosts, you can also use dynamic binding.



  • 4.  RE: iSCSI port binding

    Posted May 30, 2017 02:41 PM

    We are using EMC VNX. It has active-active storage processors. VNX's best practice is not to use port binding.

    I am not going to remove vmkernel. I am trying to remove port binding.



  • 5.  RE: iSCSI port binding

    Posted May 31, 2017 07:47 AM

    Yes, I understand. You want to remove the VMkernel interface port binding from the iSCSI adapter. If you do this, a disconnect and reconnect of the iSCSI connection will occur.



  • 6.  RE: iSCSI port binding

    Posted Jun 03, 2017 01:19 PM

    I did unbind the vmk on both nics (vmk3 on vmnic3 and vmk5 was on vmnic5). Esxi host was disconnected from all data stores. i rebooted the esxi and did not reconnect the datastore.

    Here is the message on the vDswitch when i click on network port binding tab" No VMkernel network adapters are bound to this iscsi host bus adapter"

    Is it because I am not using iSCSI HBA?