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curious20111014
Contributor
Contributor

RE: VMWare on IBM DS3500 SAN and multipathing

Hi everyone,

My storage infrastructure comprises of a DS3500 SAN with dual-active RAID controllers attached to two IBM x3550 servers directly via SAS cables. The ESXi hosts boot locally from the servers while the virtual machines would be configured to boot from SAN.

Is multipathing necessary despite the servers being directly connected to SAN,no routers/switches are deployed in the network path from SAN to server? If I wish to configure multipathing do each of the SAS ports on each of the RAID controllers require a distinct IP address? I have decided to connect the first HBA port on server to the first SAS port on the first controller of SAN and the second HBA port to the first SAS host port on the second controller on SAN. Would this set up be reliable for data redundancy? If so, how would I proceed configuring multipathing using vSphere Client?

Regards,

anon

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briroy
Contributor
Contributor

Hi there,

I am about to embark on a similar project and was wondering if you have any feedback on the DS3500 in this configuration?

I was considering a similar configuration ie Dual Controller DS3500 with 2 x ESX nodes connected via SAS (redundant config 2 x HBAs in each ESX node).

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Brian.

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john23
Commander
Commander

even if server is directly connected to the storage array, you need multipathing.

provide two paths to each lun will provide you redundancy on path failover. you can check from the stroage end side.

Thanks -A Read my blogs: www.openwriteup.com
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curious12011101
Contributor
Contributor

Hey,

I am assuming that the servers are IBM x3550 connecting to IBM DS3500 SAN.

Please refer to the enclosed attachment.

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briroy
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks curious1!!

Is that a roll out you have completed?  Did you write the how to?  How do you find the performance of the solution?

So many questions....

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curious12011101
Contributor
Contributor

Hey briroy,

Yes I wrote out the procedure.....after much trial and error experimentation and intensive reseach.

It is a good practice to document such configurations for future reference...

As for the performance....works fine.... no problems encountered so far.

I am glad this helped!!

Regards,

curious1

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briroy
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Curious1,

I have got this project under way now and have run in to a small problem.  I have two ESXi (4.1 update1) hosts (x3650M3) both with 2 x SAS HBAs similar to your documented install.  I have connected,

ESX01

HBA1 to SPA1

HBA2 to SPB1

ESX02

HBA1 to SPA2

HBA2 to SPB2

When I boot either ESX node, straight after POST as the ESXi embeded is about to boot the Light path diagnostics lights up for MEM and CNFG.  Everything seems to work OK however the DS3500 complains that 3 of my LUNs are not hosted on their preffered path.  It turns out that I cant present any LUNs from SPB and all LUNs revert back to SPA.  I have placed a call with IBM but just checking to see if you came accross a similar issue?

Brian

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cosy
Contributor
Contributor

HI,

I'm in a design of same setup.  2 x X3650 and 1 x DS 3524 ( SAS) so i can use this as shared storage?Curious1, Any Image of the setup?

Thanks,

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