MSA2312i Hardware iSCSI Setup Help Needed

[Steven_Woodward]

Thanks in advance for the help you are about to provide.

I've never setup an iSCSI on this end and we are doing a pilot in a remote site. Currently we do not have someone available to setup the iSCSI so this was given to me in this fashion to setup and get working.

(Please see attached doc for setup details)

Questions:

1. Does the IP address set on the hardware HBA on the ESX host have to have a specific IP? (same subnet as iscsi storage or is this an IP that is needed both on the HBA and somewhere on the storage side as a pointer, same as raid controller A/B? etc..) I'm assuming it needs a unique IP but want clarification

2. In the MSA I see Host Settings/Mappings/Interfaces - Anything specific needed here? And does the Host Interface Port A/B IP address what is set in the dynamic discovery/static discovery? Does it have to be on the same subnet as the HBA? the MSA?

Basically I need someone to say:

Goto your storage msa and set your port IPs to be the same as your hba network and set place them in your discovery tab etc..

OR

Your port IPs are ok they need to be placed in your discovery tab and your HBA IP must match the same subnet as your msa controller etc..

Just confirm what needs to match and what needs to be unique and a little education on it and let me know if you have any specific quesitons that I left info out about.

Hope that helps explain what I need and thanks again for all the assistance in advance!

Steven

[Steven_Woodward]

Ok Virtual Peeps...I've gotten some clarification after finding this post which I know is for the software initiator and i'm doing the hardware initiator setup.

http://blog.ntgconsult.dk/2010/02/vsphere4-esx4-how-to-configure-iscsi-software-initiator-on-esx4-against-a-hp-msa-iscsi-storage.html

Can someone confirm:

The IP addresses that are given to the Hardware HBAs need to be on the same subnet as the iSCSI controller IP (which I'm assuming is aka iSCSI Targets or are the Targets considered the Ports?) and the IPs given to the Ports which are placed in the Discovery Tab need to be similar. I guess I'm a bit confused since what one side calls conrollers/ports the vmware side calls targets etc...Some clarification would be great!

Thanks in advance!

Steven

[weinstein5]

Technically no the IP address on the HBA does not need to be on the same subnet as your iSCSI controllers but best practice states that they should be si you do not route traffic. Yes the targets are the ports on iSCSI SAN - i do not know if you had found this document http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_iscsi_san_cfg.pdf it has some great information -

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[Steven_Woodward]

Then the remaining question is - do the ports/targets require the same ip as....? or should they be the internal 192.168.x.x ?

Thanks for the quick response!

Steven

[weinstein5]

the ip addresses should be unique and on the same subnet as I said per best practices - and to insure the traffic does go anywhere I would use a non routable subnet like 192.168.x.x -

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