P4000 VSA on vSphere continuous disk access

[Julian Bowker_2]

We are testing a trial of P4000 VSA 8.1 on the current build of vSphere (ESX 4). After creating a storage node and adding a RAID 5 volume we get continuous disk access to the volume even before any iSCSI clients are attached or any data is copied to the volume. This shows up in the vCenter as arount 7500 KBps. Testing with a single disk non RAID volume has the same problem.

[Uwe Zessin]

Sounds like the VSA is pre-zeroing its data disks.
You do know that as of today there is no 'support' for using shared storage (=SAN)?

[Julian Bowker_2]

That had also crossed our minds but well over 24 hours seemed a long time to zero write a 200GB volume. When you mentioned no support for shared storage what did that mean, HP/LeftHand or VMware?

[Uwe Zessin]

Yes, that sounds strange.

> no support for shared storage what did that mean

It means putting the VSA's data on a shared storage. It does not mean that it does not work. However, if the disks are shared with other I/O activities one cannot make any guarantees for IOPS - at least it was explained that way during a training.

[Julian Bowker_2]

Ok, if we go ahead it would be with direct attached storage for exclusive use with the VSA. Off topic, but do you know if large (Jumbo) packets can be enabled in trial, we have used the VSA console to set the packet size but it appears to default back after setting?