HP VSA 2014 + vCenter/ESXi 6.5

[barjolu]

Hello!

We are running HP VSA 2014, v11.5, in an environment consisting of vCenter 5.5 and ESXi 5.5.

Now we're planning to upgrade vCenter and ESXi to 6.5. Is 6.5 supported by HP VSA 2014? I'm having trouble finding any compatibility lists regarding this... All I found is in the installation guide that says:

VMware vSphere 6.0 for LeftHand OS 12.5 or later is supported.

But what about vSphere 6.5?

VSA is deployed with its storage on VMDK-disks.

Is there anything critical to consider during vCenter and ESXi upgrade to 6.5 when running HP VSA 2014? If anyone can point me to any documentation I really appreciate it.

[Stor_Mort · Accepted solution]

Hi barjolu, 

The VSA 2014 with LeftHand OS 11.5 will not be supported on VMware 6.5. You will need to upgrade to LHOS 12.7, which is in testing now and should be released in a few months. (VSA 2014 with LHOS 12.7 will also be supported on Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V.)

I would not recommend upgrading the hypervisor to 6.5 before upgrading the VSA to 12.7. It might work, but has not been tested by us. We may not be able to help if you encounter problems.

[barjolu]

Thank you!

I have done the upgrade to LHOS 12.6 and will upgrade vSphere to 6.0 later this week.

I'll do the upgrade to vSphere 6.5 a few months after the release of LHOS 12.7.

Thanks! Appreciate your answer.

[RIYAJ]

Hi, I am running storevirtual VSA with LeftOS v 12.6 on VMware VSphere 6.5. it is working fine. Are you suggesting it is good but not supported? 

[Stor_Mort]

Hi Riyaj,

To be clear, there are two modes of operation which we should distinguish between:

1. VSA as a guest in a hypervisor environment

2. VSA as a storage target providing storage to hypervisor initiators

The VSA 2014 12.6 is not supported as a guest under vSphere 6.5 or Windows Server 2016. There may be some services which do not work. Upgrade to 12.7 when released.

The VSA 2014 12.6 should be able to provide storage to vSphere 6.5 and Windows Server 2016 initiators. Testing is not yet completed. HPE will update the compatibility documentation soon. See the HPE StoreVirtual 4000 and HPE StoreVirtual VSA Compatibility Matrix at the link below.

https://h20272.www2.hpe.com/SPOCK/Pages/spock2Html.aspx?htmlFile=hw_lefthand.html

[Mike Chivers]

Just wondering if there is any indication available on when HP VSA / LHOS 12.7 is likely to be released.

We are building a vSphere 6.5 + HP VSA system at present and wanting to plan for when we can put it into production with a supported HP VSA deployed on it.

Thanks.

[Jerry Padavath]

Interested in the same information when a supported HP VSA / LHOS 12.7 will be released.

Within next months or can we expect an update within the next weeks?

Thanks.

[david82lex]

Hello,

We have a VSA 12.6 setup on vmware 6.5 using AO (10Tb license) on SSD and HDD storage.

Two HPE hosts DL380 Gen9 with 2 CPU dans P840 raid controller.

We had performances issues in january and the HPE support asked us to wait the 12.7 for vmware 6.5 compatibility.

Now, we have installed the 12.7 end of may and we have an open case with HPE since one month.

Our case is still open, the L1 & L3 support tried a lot of things but the performances are still wrong:
CrystalDiskMark: 5 pass, 1GB, OS on another datastore. The tested drive in alone on the tested datastore.

Directly on the SSD:

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 6946.665 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2707.074 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 354.259 MB/s [ 86489.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 295.515 MB/s [ 72147.2 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 2640.449 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 2159.627 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 89.313 MB/s [ 21804.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 53.438 MB/s [ 13046.4 IOPS]

Directly on the 10K HDD:

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 6275.429 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 5645.103 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 352.032 MB/s [ 85945.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 346.346 MB/s [ 84557.1 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 9.857 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 1899.204 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.030 MB/s [ 7.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 59.551 MB/s [ 14538.8 IOPS]

Results on the VSA using AO, two vsa hosts:

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2165.303 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 236.340 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 159.824 MB/s [ 39019.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 28.477 MB/s [ 6952.4 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 946.491 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 152.490 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 18.384 MB/s [ 4488.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 9.340 MB/s [ 2280.3 IOPS]

The SSD have a 2GB raid controller and the HDD have a 4Gb controller.

SSD SmartPath has been disabled. The ratio on both raid cards is 50% / 50%

I can accept a little difference between the HDD and SSD performances but not so much. I've put 4 VM Windows Server 2016 using remote desktop and 10 test users. The remote desktop sessions are unusable. HDD lags, apps "not responding", ... 

We have two other setup with VSA 12.6 on ESX 6.0 with P440 raid controller (one with ssd&hdd, the other one with hdd) and the vm are stable and more powerfull. Even if the crystaldisk mark is wrost:

 Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  1401.751 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :   684.114 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :    83.103 MB/s [ 20288.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :    28.960 MB/s [  7070.3 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) :  1006.885 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) :   382.975 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    16.435 MB/s [  4012.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :     8.986 MB/s [  2193.8 IOPS]

Our support ticket is still open since one month and we have no more reponse.... Even with our 24/7 vsa carepack.

Regards,

David

[BenLoveday]

Hey David,

Do you have any other details around how you've deployed and configured the VSAs?

Are you using RDM or VMDK datastores for your VSA disks?

Are you using the LH MEM driver PSP or vmware round robin PSP?

Have you definitely confirmed that your RAID groups are properly mapped to the right tier in the VSA? I've seen it where a Tier 0 volume was in fact two 10k SAS drives mirrored by mistake instead of SSD drives which killed the performance.

Cheers,

Ben

[david82lex]

Hey Ben,

We have a Management Group and a Cluster using two hosts. The VSA setup seams to be fine.
The 

The datastores are on vmdk, we tried the RDM with the hpe support but we had the same results.

On each ESX server, we have:
- P440 with 2x 10k RAID1 and 6x 800GB SSD 846434-B21
- P840 with 5x 1.2-TB 12G 10K 2.5 781518-B21

We have tried both RR and LH MEM driver PSP, same performances.

We have doublechecked the RAID groups and we had:
- Tier 0: SSD only
- Tier 1: HDD 10k only

The RAID 1  with two 10k hdd are only used for ESX setup.

HPE asked me to do that:

---

Can you also please change the Round Robin Settings from 1000 to 1?
https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2069356

---

Can you please redeploy the VSAs and Use Raw Device Mapping to Add Virtual Data disks to the VSA instead of VMFS?

---

Disable Large Receive Offload Feature in VMware Host

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1027511

---

Can you please disable ATS heartbeat? Please check the following VMware KB.
https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2091600

Thanks,

David