Best Practice for Setting up ISCSI with NetApp FAS3220 – And Performance issue to resolve
I have a vSwitch3 setup with two VMkernel Ports for ISCSI:
Iscsi01 – 10.20.221.x /24 – vmnic6
Issci02 – 10.20.222.x /24 – vmnic4
Controller A on the FAS3320 is setup with one ip from
10.20.221 and 10.20.222
We ran into an issue where the performance tanked and the
DAVG/cmd in ESX top (option U) was sometimes spiking to over 10,000.
To stabilize the environment we removed one of the 10 gig
nics from vSwitch 3 leaving only 1 ten gig nic and this reduced the lag.
We have a dedicated ISCSI network with Brocade and 10 Gig
cards.
Question 1. Is it acceptable to have two different IP addresses setup for ISCSI like this?
VMware® vSphere® 5, which shipped in the summer of 2011, delivers better application performance and availability for all business-critical applications while automating the management of an increasingly broad pool of datacenter resources. That includes storage technology from NetApp, a valued partner that has worked closely with VMware to develop solutions that work together seamlessly and accelerate the shift to cloud computing for our mutual customers.
As part of that effort, NetApp has released a comprehensive new publication that guides our customers through the deployment of solutions that combine vSphere with NetApp. The new NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere (technical report TR-3749) includes valuable new content specific to the powerful new storage features in vSphere 5.
In his recent blog, Vaughn Stewart of NetApp raves about the report. It contains deployment considerations and best practices that have been validated by both NetApp and VMware. Contents include:
As you dig into this 118-page report, I suggest you pay close attention to the design best practices on the following topics that vSphere 5 customers are likely to find especially valuable: