vSphere guidance (looking for a field guide for v4)

[teledata]

Was just reading this tonight. I'm setting up a customer with vSphere 4, and we are configuring a Multi-Site SAN (Campus SAN) with 2 VIP subnets... was banging my head against the wall until I read this article:

ANYONE using vSphere 4 and Lefthand SANs should read this article!!!!!

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/09/a-multivendor-post-on-using-iscsi-with-vmware-vsphere.html

[Gauche]

The guide has been published now. so for future reference please use this link instead of the attachement I provided earlier. The link will actually get future updates.

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA3-0261ENW

[teledata]

I'm still having problems understanding the pathing issues...

I setup a customer with a multi-site san.
We configured 2 VIPs (each in their own unique subnet) and then did a stretched VLAN of BOTH storage vlans across the WAN. (It's a 10gb fiber connection and all VLANing is done via switches, so there's really no significant extra hops)

I understand you can't do binding/MPIO with the multi-site san (because of a VMware restriction of not performing vmkernel routing)

So I've got 2 vmkernels. one in subnet a, and one in b... and it DOES do some failover.. although there is an oddity.. instead of seeing 2 paths, 1 in each subnet I see 2 paths, but it lists them both using the same subnet:

ie:
Storage Paths:
Path1: vmhba34:C0:T4:L0 (target 172.30.5.18:3260)
Path2: vmhba34:C1:T2:L0 (target 172.30.5.18:3260)

Dynamic Discovery targets:
172.30.5.10 (VIP of the local 5 storage subnet)
172.30.105.10 (VIP for the remote 105 storage subnet)

vmkernel01: 172.30.5.54
vmkernel02: 172.30.105.54

Shouldn't I see 1 path on the 5 network, and the 2nd on the 105 network?

[M.Braak]

@Gauche: What is HP's opinion about the best practice when connecting a second iSCSI target within a Windows VM?
Use VMWare native RDM mapping or use the MSiSCSI inititiator with Lefthand MPIO DSM?

Before VMware could't do multipathing so the MSiSCSI with DSM was best pratice but now VMWare also does multipathing things could have changed.

The best solution in my opinion is that HP releases a MPIO plugin for vSphere, but i think that will take a will to come out. (if it's even planned to be created)

[Ben02]

Any news on this? I still don't see Vsphere truly multi-pathing to multiple LH nodes. The current VMWare multi-pathing simply makes multiple connections to the same node. Any ideas?

[Paul Hutchings]

Well I for one would be grateful for any follow-up on this as the whole multi-site and vSphere "best practise" thing isn't all that well documented by HP.

[M.Braak]

Well i know HP is going to release storage plugins for vSphere soon.. (I think it will be included with SAN/IQ 9 which will be released next month)

[Paul Hutchings]

So what is the correct command to bind VMKernel's to the iSCSI adaptor please?

The HP docs say:

vmkiscsi-tool -V -a vmk0 vmhba36 vmkiscsi-tool -V -a vmk1 vmhba36

Yet the vSphere documentation says:

1 Connect vmk1 to vmhba33: esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk1 -d vmhba33.
2 Connect vmk2 to vmhba33: esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk2 -d vmhba33.
3 Verify vmhba33 configuration: esxcli swiscsi nic list -d vmhba33.

Both vmk1 and vmk2 should be listed.