EVA and VMWare Host

[Benoît]

Hi,

In Command View, is it necessary to create a VMWare Host for a VMWare host?
Does it work as Windows host?
If declared as Windows host, is there any risk?

Thanks

[Peter Mattei]

Yes, you need to use VMWare setting because the Host OS of VMWare doing the physical IO to the EVA is Linux.
The guest OSes do not communicate with the EVA but with a Linux file only.

However, I have not tried it!
I assume that due to different SCSI behaviour you could get into trouble in certain situations like error recovery etc.

Cheers
Peter

[Benoît]

Ok, thanks for your answer.

If virtual machine already declared as Windows host type (working well), can we change it live to VMWare host type ?

[Peter Mattei]

I belive yes but will try tomorrow and come back to you!

Peter

[SAKET_5]

Benoit,

You should refer to the Release Notes for VMware (i.e. Connectivity Guides for VMware) for the appropriate VCS/XCS Version running on your EVAs.

So, for example, if you have an EVA8000 running XCS V.5.100 or above, your host "OS Type" should be set to "VMware". However, if you have an EVA5000 running VCS V.3.028 or below, your host "OS Type" setting for the VMware hosts should be set to "Custom" with a value of "000000002200282E".

Guest OSs on the virtual hosts do not come into equation in your setup - the VMware Operating system (yes, based on Linux kernel to be more precise)is establishing connectivity to the EVA. So, setting applies for VMware and nothing else.

[Peter Mattei]

I just testet it in our LAB and yes, you can change the mode concurrently!
Actually I found some VMWare hosts with LUNs in Windows mode and we did not experience problems yet but nevertheless I changed all to VMWare respectively to custome mode with a value of 000000002200282E

Cheers
Peter