topic Re: P4000 with vmware in StoreVirtual Storage

P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 08:28:53 GMT

i am new to left hand p4000. i want to install p4000 with vmware. is there any installation document available in hp web site ??

pls share the document for p4000 installtion and vmware installation on p4000. What is san iq software on p4000.

Re: P4000 with vmware

Steven Clementi — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:00:19 GMT

When you download the VSA, you get documents with it.

You can get it here...

" https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductsList.do?category=SWSDED "

installation is simple.

Copy the vm files to your datastore.

Assign a disk to it (1 at minimum, up to 5)

Start the vm, set an IP address

Load up your CMC, discover the vsa and away you go.

Steven

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:16:58 GMT

I am having a hardware aplliance, so can i connect directly to the hardware appliance and set a ip ??? is there any docs available

Re: P4000 with vmware

Uwe Zessin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:31:36 GMT

http://www.hp.com/go/p4000

Re: P4000 with vmware

Rik-Bel — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:42:29 GMT

Detailed description found:

http://www.bujarra.com/?p=2657〈=en

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:46:48 GMT

Thanks for the reply.
We are having P4300 with 8 x 1TB drives. I have given the IP and installed CMC in my pc. I have craeted Cluster. When i try to create Volumes i have selected RAID 5. But it gives an error says "Minimum 4 storage nodes required" How to resolve this issue??

Re: P4000 with vmware

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:04:50 GMT

You have selected *Network* RAID-5, and that does require 4 storage nodes at minimum. The software creates a 'network stripe' of 4 chunks (3 data and 1 parity) and stores it on 4 different storage nodes in a cluster.

If you have 1(one) storage node, you can only create volumes with Network RAID-0. The data should still be protected against disk failures by the embedded SmartArray controller which does *hardware* RAID.

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:54:28 GMT

Thanks for the information.
I understtod the difference now. To install this box what are the network pre requests required ?? Is there any separate vlan required for this box ?? will you please provide some more details on this ??

I am planning to use this box for vmware vsphere. do you have any document available on this ??

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:56:28 GMT

What is nic bonding ???
Do i need to create a separate vmkernel port in my vsphere to communicate with p4300.

Re: P4000 with vmware

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:14:30 GMT

There is no separate VLAN *required*, but many customers isolate the iSCSI traffic from the normal client/server traffic.

Unfortunately, the P4000 G2 support pages or *NOT* well-maintained :-( :-(

But there are still a lot of useful files in the P4000 G1 and VSA areas:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual〈=en&cc=us&docIndexId=64179&taskId=101&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=3936136

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual〈=en&cc=us&docIndexId=64179&taskId=135&prodTypeId=18964&prodSeriesId=3936556

http://www.hp.com/go/p4000
will take you to the current product page. From there you can also find a link to "Resource library". Scroll down to 'white papers' and you will find additional information for P4000/vSphere.

NIC bonding means that you bind two interfaces together, usually for failover redundancy.

In most cases, the ESX iSCSI software initiator is used. That means one or more VMkernel port groups are required for communication with the P4000. Note that in ESX4 you can no longer use simple 'adapter teaming'/'nic bonding' for failovers - you do need at least two different VMkernel port groups, because the iSCSI initiator can only be bound to one physical NIC via that group.

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:39:56 GMT

Do we need a HBA on the server to connect with P4000 iscsi storage ??? or only the network card is ok?

Re: P4000 with vmware

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:44:23 GMT

You can use one or more plain GigaBit NIC(s) and the VMkernel software iSCSI initiator.

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:53:41 GMT

Ok, Because i have seen on some documents they say that to use HBA cards for iscsi initiator.

Re: P4000 with vmware

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:58:17 GMT

True, an iSCSI HBA can offload a server's CPU, but on the other hand: if you have 4, 8 or more CPU cores in a modern server... you often have plenty of CPU capacity, so the extra expenses or not always justified.
And it is necessary to check if and what iSCSI HBAs are supported with the P4000 system.

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:34:27 GMT

If we are using HBA, then how HBA get connects to iscsi box ???

Bonding:
Initally i have given two ip address to Nics and addedd the storage node into the CMC. Now when i try to enable bonding , it asks for one more IP address...
Why this ip address is required ??
Do we need 3 IP address for one box for bonding ??

At present we have no license purchased for multsite and clustering for the node. We will purchase additioanl nodes and license in the future.
So can we use standard cluster or multi site cluster ?? We need to add additional nodes in the future.
Please advice about best practises for clustering.

Re: P4000 with vmware

samaoas — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:47:02 GMT

One More Question,

I have 2 Nos of P4300 G2. I have configured management group and craeted a cluster and added both the nodes inside the cluster. I have created a volume of 50 GB and presented to my PC. I have formatted the volume and assigned drive letter. But when i switch off the first node the volume disappears.
How to failover the volume to another node in the cluster ??