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CloudViseSoluti
Contributor
Contributor

2 x MD3200i iSCSI Multipathing Design

Can you please review and approve my iSCSI storage design. I have read alot of information regarding the MD3200i and to get true active/active multipathing and best throughput I need to dedicate each Host pNIC to a seperate subnet. Also Switches will have Jumbo Frames and Flow Control enabled.

  • 3 x Dell PowerEdge, 48GB, 2 x QuadCores (8 x pNICs each)
  • 2 x Dell Power Connect 5424 Switches
  • 2 x MD3200i iSCSI SANs (1 for VMs, 1 for Backups)
  • VMware vSphere ESXi Essentials Plus
  • 1GB Storage network
  • Host pNIC 0 & 1 = Production Network / Mgmt
  • Host pNIC 2 - 5 = Storage iSCSI Network (Each NIC on seperate subnet)
  • Host pNIC 6 = vMotion (Seperate subnet)
  • Host pNIC 7 = Backup SAN Network ( Sahring same subnet as vMotion)

iSCSI_SAN_Design_v2.jpg

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jamesbowling
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Looks good but my personal take on sharing vMotion with another network that will typically take on a lot of traffic is to keep them segregated.  I always try to separate the vMotion traffic from other things so I can guarantee my vMotion full throttle.  Other than my personal opinion, I think it looks good.

James B. | Blog: http://www.vSential.com | Twitter: @vSential --- If you found this helpful then please awards helpful or correct points accordingly. Thanks!
AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

IMHO I prefer have dedicated iSCSI switches.

In your case if you use the PC5424 only for iSCSI you can have two switches without any connection between them.

The vMotion network usually can go on more powerful switches (in a dedicated VLAN).

About the backup network, this really depend on how do you handle backup. If you use SAN or hot-add more you do not need a specific backup network at all.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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CloudViseSoluti
Contributor
Contributor

These are 2 PC5424s that are dedicated for iSCSI but with 3 VLANs on each. The only VLAN that is on both switches is the vMotion/Backup subnet. I plan on using the VMware Data Recovery solution that comes with Essentials plus to backup the VMs from the production MD3200i to the Backup MD3200i over the 2 dedicated pNICs on each host.

If this is the wrong approach let me know as I have never implemented VDR.

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

If you go to network more, then VDR talk with hosts, so it depends where is the management port.

Otherwise it can work in hot-add so no need of specific network (basically it works on iSCSI network doing a disk copy).

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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