Command View within a VM

[Joshua Small_2]

Hi,

I'm seeking definitive advice regarding Command View within a VM.

A proposed environment is ESXi based with FC storage.

There is supported advice from VMware regarding using VMDirectPath to pass an HBA through to a VM - but being unable to use that HBA for VM storage means you might aswell make it a physical server.

The P6350 setup guide seems to suggest setting up an iSCSI management LUN to your CV server is the recommended step even if all your storage is on FC. This sounds like it would work around the issue.

Similarly, I'm aware the newer model has an onboard management controller - which also appears limited in its functions.

Presales however have told us that, whilst that will work, "several" features and options are not available in this configuration. Google does suggest one such option is EVAPerf which I view as critical - however any such documentation appeared to be quite out of date.

So to ask for current advice, can anyone confirm, whether there is a way around using a physical server, which does not impose any limitations?

Edit: HP Performance Advisor is also a requirement.

[Jan Soska · Accepted solution]

Hello Joshua,

Best option is the simplest one - use one of your HW servers attached to SAN as CV server together with evaperf and Performance Advisor. There is really no need to maky him dedicated. Trafic between it and EVA is "symbolic" and you can use him for many other purposes. in our case it is Data Protector Cell server, VMware backup server and HP SIM and IRS server.

Running CV under VM has limitation of wasting one FC HBA, so it makes no sence. Unfortunatelly, I do not have any personal experience with embended CV, but I think you are right is has many limitation too.

Jan

[Joshua Small_2]

Thanks for that Jan.

The catch is that with each successive technological leap, there becomes less need for any existing hardware based server. I could pretty much phase them out of existence if it wasn't for issues like this :p

[Jan Soska]

Hello, I understand you point. But finally there is still need for real hw san server - at least backup server. So we decided to you him for another purposes too.. :) (75% of our server is vmware vitualized, generally only heavy load DB server and special purpose servers with add on card are still real...). And CV has so small need that you should ease find nice place for it. :)

Jan