Skip navigation
VMware

This Question is Possibly Answered

1 "correct" answer available (10 pts) 1 "helpful" answer available (6 pts)
1,888 Views 3 Replies Last post: Aug 4, 2008 4:35 PM by diztorted RSS
meistermn Master 1,474 posts since
Dec 7, 2004
Currently Being Moderated

Aug 3, 2008 9:11 AM

Netapp host utilities for esxi when are they released?

 

i think there are many using netapp fc with esx 3.5. The netapp host utilities must be installed in esx 3.5 to set the optimal path.

 

 

So where are the netapp host utlities for ESXi ???

 

 

On the vmware blog I found the following:

 

 

One request I've been hearing a lot lately is that people would like to automate configuration of storage paths. This tends to be most useful if you have lots of ESX hosts and lots of big expensive arrays to hold their VMs, but one aspect of storage path configuration can be very useful even if you don't have a huge deployment.

 

 

http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/2008/07/managing-storag.html

 

 

 

 

 

diztorted Master 737 posts since
Mar 14, 2005
Currently Being Moderated
1. Aug 3, 2008 1:26 PM in response to: meistermn
Re: Netapp host utilities for esxi when are they released?

My guess is you won't be seeing any such tools coming out for ESXi anytime soon, just like you won't see the HP SIM Agents nor the Dell OpenManage agents or the IBM Director agents. That's why many people aren't ready to go full-scale with the platform yet in larger environments where those third party tools are a big help.

kjb007 Guru vExpert 6,682 posts since
Sep 18, 2006
Currently Being Moderated
2. Aug 4, 2008 4:16 PM in response to: meistermn
Re: Netapp host utilities for esxi when are they released?

Don't forget that there is support for round-robin loadbalancing as well.  It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but it does show that vmware is making attempts at automating some of the things that people are doing manually, such as balancing their paths. 

 

 

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
diztorted Master 737 posts since
Mar 14, 2005
Currently Being Moderated
3. Aug 4, 2008 4:35 PM in response to: kjb007
Re: Netapp host utilities for esxi when are they released?

The problem with that, especially with NetApp arrays, is that you can't just arbitruarly use round robin and let ESX work it out.. I've had several discussions with the ESX storage folks, and I keep trying to get through to them the problem here is that NetApp has proixy/non-proxy paths when you use clustered filers. ESX does not (I repeat does NOT) natively recognize that one path should be better than another (for Windows, we have to use NetApp's MPIO ware), and as such, some of our LUN's go down a proxy path unless manually changed.. If we don't go through and clean all of htat up, we end up getting notifications that we have fcp partner mismatch errors and tickets auto get generated... It's very annoying. 

 

For ESX, as the subject implies, there is a utility kit (NetApp brands this an FCP Attach Kit) that has a tool that can configure multipathing properly for LUN's to insure this situation doesn't occur... Currently, with ESXi, not so much. That's a part of why we aren't making a jump to ESXi in a larger way.. If we couldn't use those tools, life would NOT be fun..

Bookmarked By (0)

Share This Page

Communities