will vmotion work in the following scenario

[ChrisLopes]

ESX1 have 2 HBA Ports ( HBA1, HBA2) . Each ESX Server has 4 NIC ( one for service console, one for vmotion, 2 for NIC Teaming)

ESX 2 have 2 HBA Ports ( HBA3, HBA4)

I have a SAN storage with 2 Controller. Each controller have 2 Fibre Channel Port ( Ctrl 0 ( Port A and Port B), (Ctrl 1 ( Port A and Port B)

I have a backup server (bkserver)with 2 HBA Card ( HBA5 and HBA6)

There is NO SAN SWITCH

ESX1 -> HBA1 is connected with a direct loop using fibre to Ctrl 0, Port A

ESX2 -> HBA3 is connected with a direct loop using fibre to Ctrl 1, Port A

Bkserver (HBA5) is connected to Ctrl0 to Port B and bkserver(HBA6) is connected to Ctrl1 to Port B.

Questions

1. Will vmotion and DRS work in this way?

2. What is the implication if Ctrl0 port is down ? will the server shutdown and restart on ESX 2 and power on.

3. Will the backupserver( bkserver) able to perform a image backup through SAN.

THANKS

[kooltechies]

First thing from implementation perspective you should always have a fibre channel switch , with at least four paths to the Lun. To answer your question.

1. Will vmotion and DRS work in this way? : Yes as long as you have same Network Label , you satisfy the CPU requirement and have a shared storage.

2. What is the implication if Ctrl0 port is down ? will the server shutdown and restart on ESX 2 and power on. : No the ESX server will loose access to the Lun but will not power off VMs as the HA heartbeat which goes through the network is still alive, if the Lun doesn't tresspass from ctrl0 to ctrl1 , you will have all your VMs crashing.

3. Will the backupserver( bkserver) able to perform a image backup through SAN.: Yes : again you need shared storge.

Thanks,

Samir

P.S : If you think that the answer is helpful please consider rewarding points.

[marcelo_soares]

Look, working with no FC switch works OK, but you need to look at HCL in order to see if your storage is supported under this condition. If is an active/active array, there should be no difficulty doing that. VMotion and DRS should work fine also. The backup server also should be able to backup from the SAN.

Now regarding the ctrl 0 problem, as your ESX will not fail (only the VMs will go down), even if you have HA, the VMs WILL NOT restart at the other host - just if your ESX have a failure due to this storage fault, which is not the desirable behavior.

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310

Technical Support Engineer

Linux Server Senior Administrator

[ChrisLopes]

Hi,

If ESX1 have 5 VM and ESX2 have 6 VM. Let say for some reason, ESX1 was down due to power failure, am I right to say that the VM will be power off or it will vmotion to ESX2?

[marcelo_soares]

If you have HA enabled and configured to allow 1 host failure (this will make your vCenter calculate always if both hosts have enough memory/cpu to handle a failure like that), the VMs that resided i the ESX1 will be powered on in the ESX2. Not vmotion, because you do not have ESX1 alive anymore.

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310

Technical Support Engineer

Linux Server Senior Administrator

[ChrisLopes]

Hi,

Please be patience on your advise.

I have 3 option attached. Which is the best option since there is no SAN Switch.

In addition, in option 3, there the backup server is using AVVI, can it has two connection to the storage or the limitaiton is one cable.

Is backup directly through SAN better or backup through LAN which create a mount point on the backup server? Does backup through SAN directly required a mount point? Am I right to stay that since AVVI Agent is enabled, you can browse the image file directly without any mount point?

[marcelo_soares]

Any of the three will work, but you need to be sure your storage is active/active, or you will begin to have path thrashing.

The VCB will do a mount does not matter if you do file level backups using the LAN or he SAN (lan will be obviously slower than the san one). If you do fullvm backups the VMDKs will be copied to your VCB proxy filesystem.

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310

Technical Support Engineer

Linux Server Senior Administrator

[ChrisLopes]

Hi,

Can the backup server which is also the VCB Proxy have 2 HBA Connection to the Storage controller. In the past, i think only 1 HBA Card is supported.

Since the SAN say have 2 GB of storage and 1.5 TB of data is within these 2 TB Storage and my backup server have only 250 GB of free space.

If I specify the transport mode as "SAN", on the symantec backup exec, do I need to specify a local mount point on the backup server.

By the way, just by installing the VCB framework on the backup server will do just fine right for the symantec AVVI to work? Is there any other special script or command I need to run again?

[marcelo_soares]

With VCB 1.5 you can use more than 1 path, but I in fact don't use to do it. About the symantec tool, I really don't know how to configure it (my knowledge goes just to vcbmounter endline). You can find the integration scripts at the vmware download page, and with them you will be able to integrate your backup software with the VCB.

Marcelo Soares

VMWare Certified Professional 310

Technical Support Engineer

Linux Server Senior Administrator