vSphere 5 and Dell Equallogic iSCSI

[ditro2001]

Hello all,

I need some suggestions on how to design my iSCSI network

I habe 2 x R520 Power Edges with 2 Onboard Nics, 4 x PCI Nic, and 1 x Dual Port Nic -> so 8 nics at all

and a Equallogic PS4100 with 2 Controllers and 2 Nics on each Controller

I have 2 Dell Switches for my iSCSI Network.

The MGMT Adress of the Equallogic is 10.10.1.100

The Group IP is 10.10.1.101 - or must these IP in the iSCSI Network

My iSCSI Network should be

192.168.1.x / 24

do I need one network or do I have to use 2 different networks in order to get the failover working.

I plan 2 or 4 nics for vmkernel iSCSI traffic - what would you suggest?

If I use 4 nics - do I use 2 vmkernel ports with 2 links and link aggregation on the switches? Or do I use 4 vmkernel ports and round robin?

ESX1

vnmic0 192.168.1.1

vmnic1 192.168.1.2

ESX2

vnmic0 192.168.1.3

vmnic1 192.168.1.4

Equallogic

eth0 192.168.1.5

eth1 192.168.1.6

ESX1+ESX2

vmnic0 - iSCSI01

vmnic1 - iSCSI02

SwitchA

vmnic0 Esx1, vmnic1 ESX2, ControllerA eth0, ControllerB eth1

SwitchB

vmnic1 ESX1, vmnic0 ESX2, Controller A eth1, ControllerB eth0

Do I have to trunk the two switches?

regards

Dennsi

[elgreco81]

Hi,

I would recommend 2 virtual switches with 2 nics each. Multipathing in Fixed for each switch if it's an active/passive array and Round Robin if it's an active/active array.

1 VLAN should be fine.

MTU = 9000 in all the components of your iSCSI infraestructure (jumbo frames).

Try to have HA in every part of your infraestructure like making sure that you don't have 1 vSwitch connected to 2 ports on the same HBA and using the same switch...

If you have the option to enable "Port fast" in your switch, do it.

CHAP autentication the most secure you can (if software initiators, I think they are, Mutual CHAP)

You don't need to trunk the 2 switches.

Try to maintain your number of VMs distribuited among your LUNs (for not collapsing them with SCSI reservations)

That's all I can think of right now. Hope it helped you! If it did, please remember to award the corresponding points :smileyhappy: so we all win!

Regards,

elgreco81

[ditro2001]

thank you for your fast reply.

If you recommend to use 2 nics on each of my two virtual switches for iSCSI you mean

vswitch0

iSCSi01 with vmnic0,vmnic1

and

vswitch1 with vmnic2, vmnic3

right? So I have to do a link aggregation on my real switch ports, right? Do I have to configure something special on the vswitch?

I ask because I have read somewhere that you should only do 1:1 connections.

Do you know the Equallogic SAN design?

Do I have to set the group IP in my storage vlan or in my data network?

[eeg3]

You'll want to use the Equallogic MEM plugin when setting up everything up inside the hosts. It will configure everything for you according to best practices and whatnot.

You will want your group IP in your storage VLAN.

[elgreco81]

Not particulary. Those are general recomendations for iSCSI storage.

I've found this! This is actually pretty detailed and complete I think :smileyhappy:

http://www.dellstorage.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2412

Hope it helps you further!!!

Regards,

elgreco81

[ditro2001]

thanks...

but in this document it says:

one nic for each vmkernel port!!!

[elgreco81]

Ok. Looked for "one nic" in the document and only found 1 coincidence. After saying "each iSCSI VMkernel port one NIC to it", it says.

"Again, each environment will differ and these numbers can change based on the number of NICs and the number of paths assigned."

The idea of more nics I've got it from vSphere Design Workshop and it made sense to me and I used it in several scenarios with good results. You could have high availability if one of them fails, you could have more room for data before it collapses, I only see advantages :smileyhappy: Anyway, I was worried that maybe with this SAN you have to do this "one-to-one"...(all it's possible and I learn something new every day), so I checked the guide and I also saw that in page 3, there's a diagram that shows two NICs connected to the same vSwitch and also in page 9.

It's possible that I'm missing something, in which part of the document you saw the one nic for each vmkernel port?

Also remember that this guide, shows you the steps to configure this particular SAN with vSphere 5 and it uses examples with a certain amount of nics that may or not match any given scenario (this guide will give you answers like where to configure port grups, etc, not best practices I think).

Regards,

elgreco81

[ditro2001]

HI Elgreco,

thank you for your help.

I've set up many szenarios as well where I used more than one nic so each vmkernel port.

But in the guide on page 4:

In a default configuration assign one VMkernel port for each physical NIC in the system. So if there are 2 NICs, assign 2 VMkernel Ports. This is referred to in the VMware iSCSI document as 1:1 port binding.

Sample Configurations

2 physical 1Gbe NICs

2 VMkernel Ports (1 per physical NIC)

4 physical 1Gbe NICs

4 VMkernel Ports (1 per physical NIC)

2 physical 10Gbe NICs

2 VMkernel Ports (1 per physical NIC)

But I'll have a try tomorrow.

thank you

regards