Dell md3000i iSCSI SAN compatibility with ESXi 5.x

supranet · ‎09-07-2011

The Dell MD3000i doesn't list in vmware's compatibility list for ESX 5.x. However, the MD3220i, MD3600i, MD3620i are listed as compatible. Has anyone tested MD3000i on esxi5 or have any knowledge if this will be making it to the HCL eventually? It took several months for it to appear on the 4.1 HCL.

TelakEng · ‎09-29-2011

Upgraded our MDI300i to the latest (which appears to have a few fixes - the least of which is a memory leak).

Number of RAID controller modules: 2

      RAID Controller Module in Enclosure 0, Slot 0


         Status:                      Online

         Current configuration
            Firmware version:         07.35.39.64
               Appware version:       07.35.39.64
               Bootware version:      07.35.39.64
            NVSRAM version:           N1532-735890-005
         Pending configuration
            Firmware version:         None
               Appware version:       None
               Bootware version:      None
            NVSRAM version:           None
            Transferred on:           None

      RAID Controller Module in Enclosure 0, Slot 1


         Status:                      Online

         Current configuration
            Firmware version:         07.35.39.64
               Appware version:       07.35.39.64
               Bootware version:      07.35.39.64
            NVSRAM version:           N1532-735890-005
         Pending configuration
            Firmware version:         None
               Appware version:       None
               Bootware version:      None
            NVSRAM version:           None
            Transferred on:           None

Running ESX5i on the hosts (Dell 1955s see posts above). Working fine - no issues to speak of.

JohnADCO · ‎09-29-2011

The issues as I understand them have been with failovers.... Did you test any failovers?

segelhof · ‎10-06-2011

I just wanted to report back I am now upgraded to ESXi 5.0 w/ my MD3000i and it is working perfectly. I did not have any issues. I upgraded the md3000i to the newest firmware and then upgraded one of my hosts to ESXi 5.0 using the update manager and it worked perfectly. I didn't have any issues w/ any of the datastores or nic's or anything.

JohnADCO · ‎10-06-2011

The issues with the other MD's were during failovers. Did you happen to test one?

Apparently everything looked fine until a failover event and they lost access to the data stores instead of it failing over properly.

BrooklynzFinest · ‎10-06-2011

More specifically the issue occurs when you have either MRU or RR as the multi path policy. Issue does not seem to happen when setup with Fixed multi path policy

JohnADCO · ‎10-06-2011

Thanks for the further clarfication. We inch ever closer to running 5.0 on some of our MD3xxx units.

segelhof · ‎10-06-2011

I just tried it and it worked fine, we are using MRU. I've got 4 NIC's dedicated to iSCSI (2 to each controller, through 2 switches). I went around and disconnected one cable at a time until I got down to 1 and was still able to browse the datastores from a vm w/o issue. I then reconnected one and disconnected the other and was still able to view the files and copy back and forth without issue.

jwollard · ‎01-16-2012

I want to add to this post.

I just did a successful upgrade of MD3000i from ESX 3.5 to ESXi 5.0, no problems.

Worked as I thought. I had to do a full re-install of esxi since there is no upgrade.

But I had two esxi (hp proliant and dell poweredge 2950) hosts that successfully connected to it.

Hope this helps anyone going to do this in the future.

lobo519 · ‎01-25-2012

Good to see that it seems to be working. Anyone else have any results good or bad??

cusius · ‎01-29-2012

Hey lobo519,

were running an MD3000i on ESXi 5.0 without any problems. (Attached:1955 Bladecenter, 2x PE2950III, R610, PER220, PESC1435).

Regards

Norman

MaximTech · ‎02-28-2012

After upgrading to ESXi 5 we ran into problems on half our hosts - odd since they were configured the same (minor differences in the iSCSI bindings). Some wouldn't boot while connected to the MD3000i, others would boot but all iSCSI devices were unavailable.

I wrote up an article on a good workaround here - involves a proxy between ESXi and the MD3000i:

http://duaneshippy.myadventures.org/?filename=Reuse-Storage-No-Longer-Supported-by-VMware

alexxdavid · ‎07-31-2012

Hi Guys,

Have anyone requested the patch from Vmware for the MD3220i as of lately?

It can be found on this link :

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=201993...

I don't have support so don't know what it is about?

Regards

jwollard · ‎07-31-2012

I am on vacation. Please contact the office.

Pete Farley

5122581282

Farley@protis.com

kiwijj · ‎08-29-2012

Hi,

I just upgraded a Dell 2950 host to ESXi 5.0 and had a small issue where I was unable to browse the datastores, though the storage was listed ok in the VI client.

That was yesterday afternoon. Left it untill today and I was going to go back to ESXi 4 when lo and behold I can now browse the datatstores fine. Everything seems to be working fine. Will leave it for a week and see how it goes before upgrading the other host. (this is for our development platform)

On another note we just purchased an MD3200 and MD1200 for our Production platform. I went away from iSCSI after all the issues I had with it and the MD3000i.

What a difference, everything is so much faster (probabaly because it's 6GB) As we only have four hosts this works a treat and as the MD3200 has 8 ports these were setup HA.

cheers,

JJ

All