- Community Home
- >
- Storage
- >
- Entry Storage Systems
- >
- Disk Enclosures
- >
- Re: MSA2012i ISCSI
Categories
Company
Local Language
Forums
Discussions
Forums
- Data Protection and Retention
- Entry Storage Systems
- Legacy
- Midrange and Enterprise Storage
- Storage Networking
- HPE Nimble Storage
Discussions
Discussions
Discussions
Forums
Forums
Discussions
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
- BladeSystem Infrastructure and Application Solutions
- Appliance Servers
- Alpha Servers
- BackOffice Products
- Internet Products
- HPE 9000 and HPE e3000 Servers
- Networking
- Netservers
- Secure OS Software for Linux
- Server Management (Insight Manager 7)
- Windows Server 2003
- Operating System - Tru64 Unix
- ProLiant Deployment and Provisioning
- Linux-Based Community / Regional
- Microsoft System Center Integration
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards
Community
Resources
Forums
Blogs
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark Topic as New
- Mark Topic as Read
- Float this Topic for Current User
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Mute
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Permalink
- Report Inappropriate Content
тАО04-17-2009 07:52 AM
тАО04-17-2009 07:52 AM
MSA2012i ISCSI
My first question is whether, given that I want to have multiple virtual servers hosted on the MSA, accessible from multiple ESX servers (clustering / failover etc) should create one huge LUN that I could hold multiple VMs on and make accessible to all my ESX servers or whether I should carve the storage up - what's the pro's and con's?
My second question is really performance wise - what raid level should I use? I will have a range of things being hosted - from very fast IO SQL to low IO boxes just serving up some files. They're 15k 300GB disks and I can have lots of them if I need them.
Any thoughts much appreciated.
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Mute
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Permalink
- Report Inappropriate Content
тАО04-17-2009 09:22 AM
тАО04-17-2009 09:22 AM
Re: MSA2012i ISCSI
Unfortunately, here is no single correct value for a VMFS volumes. I have customers with as small as 150GB (many small VMs) and others with up to 800, 900 or 1000GB (database servers) volumes.
Remember that there is one I/O queue to each VMFS volume and more volumes = more I/O queues. On the other hand: many volumes = much scattered free space. The choice is your's ;-)
Even if you create multiple volumes, I suggest to present them to all ESX servers. Unlike file systems like NTFS or EXT2/3, the VMFS can deal with multiple readers/writers without a problem.
That enables you to use other ESX features like VMotion(and DRS), HA and Storage VMotion.
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Mute
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Permalink
- Report Inappropriate Content
тАО04-17-2009 09:29 AM
тАО04-17-2009 09:29 AM
Re: MSA2012i ISCSI
So Multiple volumes to be spread between controllers makes sense. Is this controller assignment done at the vraid level or at volume within vraid disk setup?
IO queues are important. On the basis that someone might execute a big table scan on an SQL volume I wouldn't want the IO queue affecting everything else. In this scenario I guess I'd have to have the VMFS containing the SQL data in it's own volume with an IO queue, and other data in it's own volume. Am I correct?
Also I keep reading that ESX only supports the ISCSI for msa2012i at software level. Has that improved recently?
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Mute
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Permalink
- Report Inappropriate Content
тАО04-17-2009 09:51 AM
тАО04-17-2009 09:51 AM
Re: MSA2012i ISCSI
If you want to hard-partition your I/O, yes, create a separate vdisk with a volume onto which you create a single VMFS datastore which is used for one virtual machine. That's an extreme, but if you absolutely need, it is possible.
I have not checked, but you could also install an iSCSI sw initiator into the Linux/Windows guest to offload the VMkernel iSCSI initiator. I am not very familiar with the latest features of the Linux version, but the Microsoft one has been offering features like path failover and even load balancing for years (in 2007 I ran some tests and was able to read up to 180 MBytes/sec across two Gigabit links from another vendor's array into a ESX servers' Windows VM).
Last year I've set up a small ESX cluster with an MSA2012i. During setup I ran some tests from a Windows 2003 VM via the VMkernel software iSCSI initiator against a single 3 or 4 member RAID-5 vdisk/volume on 300GB/15kRPM SAS disk drives. With IOMETER and some unrealistic 'benchmark'-parameters I was able to get 100+ MBytes/sec reads and 50-70 MBytes/sec writes.
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Mute
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Permalink
- Report Inappropriate Content
тАО04-17-2009 10:05 AM
тАО04-17-2009 10:05 AM
Re: MSA2012i ISCSI
One last thing - in the setup it talks about having each IP address in a different subnet. Why is this? Is there some sort of arping issue when controller failover happens? Different subnets seems a bit extreme.
- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Mute
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Permalink
- Report Inappropriate Content
тАО04-17-2009 08:34 PM
тАО04-17-2009 08:34 PM