VMware ESX 3.5 / EVA 8400 / Failover Mode

[BrianPB]

Hello,
We're experiencing intermittent timeouts in our ESX cluster and I just want to make sure my EVA config is setup properly prior to diving into it too much.

Currently we present several luns from two different disk groups from A and B controllers from the 8400 to the ESX cluster.

1st thing: Preferred Path/Mode is set to: No Preference for all luns (perhaps this should be set to A or B failover only like we have done in the past with other 'linux' machines on our 8000 and 8100. AND if I change this live assuming multipathing is setup correctly, is the system going to notice?

Second thing: ESX cluster failover mode is set to "Preferred path", should this be set to something other than this, for example "most recently used"?

I think this pretty much covers the basics to make sure we have configs setup correctly before I start pulling logs, etc.

Thanks!
Brian

[CLEB]

I'd like to know this too.

[RobI_1]

Hi, we had this problem too with ESX3.5 and EVA4400.

We logged a call to vmware and they suggested to upgrade to the latest version of 3.5 and then the error disappeared.

They suggested in our case to also increase the host memory because of the amount of VMs we had.

We actually always use/set "the most recently used" path due to a suggestion from our service integrator that had bad experiences with the no preference.

I hope that helps.

[CLEB]

Frollo, I have the same setup.

What do you have your EVA LUNs set to?

[RobI_1]

Carl, not sure if I understood your question.

The type of the hosts is set to Vmware in the EVA hosts and the LUN type is set to Original.

[CLEB]

Frollo, what is the "Preferred path/mode:" set to on your LUNs presented to the ESX host?

[RobI_1]

"No preference" is set.

[Gary75]

From the EVA; I use load balancing; so LUN001 is on Controller A, LUN002 is on Controller B.

Then on the ESX server, I use "Fixed" path to a particular storage port from ESX Server, cooresponding to to whatever Controller the LUN is on.

Furthermore, when I choose the Fixed path, I put each LUN on different EVA Controller storage ports, spreading out the load.