ISCSI Queue Depth Adjustment - 554FLB Cards - ESXI 5.0 Update 2 - ProLiant BL460c

[FelipeG]

Hello, I've been banging my head against the wall for about 2 months trying to figure this out.  I've put in 4 calls to Vmware and 3 calls to HP support.  No one can seem to find a definitive answer.

We have 6 460C Blades with 554FLB Cards in them, we are using VirtualConnect Modules in the back of the chassis.

The blades all run esxi 5.0 update 2, the storage is a Hitachi HUS 130, we are using ISCSI to access the storage, and are using the hardware oneconnect UCNA cards that are built into the 554FLBs.   

We've been having some performance issues with the SAN, nothing horrible but its not performing as expected, we've been working with hitachi, hp, cisco and vmware to clean up any archtecture issues and we have a clean bill of health configuration wise except for one thing, that is that the queue depths on the hosts are set to high according to Hitachi.  They are recommending we reduce them because there are too many commands hitting the controllers which is causing some latency.  

The issue is no one, NO ONE can seem to verify how exactly you lower the queue depths on the emulex ucna one connect cards that are part of the 554FLB's inside the blades.  I've been on the phone with HP for hours and I've had the same case open for a good 2 months.  I cannot find documentation anywhere on either the hp or emulex site about it, there are no options to adjust the queue depths when you look at the variables available to change on the be2iscsi driver in vmware, there are no options within the BIOS of the HP Blade, there are no options when using one command manager nor the vpshere plugin provided by emulex.  Surely a card design specifically for ISCSI that includes TOE has someway to adjust the queue depths...  

IS there someone out there, anywhere that has experience changing the queue depths for ISCSI on these cards?

Thank you very much for your help.

[Casper42]

Are you using the Software initiator over a a FlexNIC or did you actually use the iSCSI section in the profile and are thus using HW iSCSI offload which shows in ESXi as an HBA?

Doesn't appear to be Emulex specific according to this:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1268

[Casper42]

In case it helps, I also found this which I got from Emulex when doing some network performance troubleshooting.

See attached

Also, this Blog post from Cormac (Storage God at VMware)...

http://cormachogan.com/2013/04/24/heads-up-device-queue-depth-on-qlogic-hbas/

let me to this KB which documents some of the default Queue Depths within VMware and how to check them.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1267

If you are using HW iSCSI, then I beleive the device name would be something like be2iscsi rather than lpfc which is the FC side of the house.