ESXi 5.5.0 VMotion, Physical Compatibility Mode RDMs

[digitalnomad]

Hello All,

I've wandered into a new environment after being out of VMWare for a while and we're running 5.5.0, these are full box FC hosts not Blades

The SAN team has taken to running a VMAX SYM provisioning server as a guest with a series of Gatekeepers attached as RDMs. Additionally we're running various flavors of MSCS CAB as well.

Q1) From what I've read "Migrating virtual machines with Raw Device Mappings (RDMs) (1005241)", we should be able to VMotion between hosts on these boxes but have had little success. Is it possible that a config change was made during zoning on the EMC side that coul be effecting this?

Q2) Although the technical articles point only to MSCS being effected by the perennial reservation slow boot issue, this puppy took a while to come up. Should these or say all Physical Compatibility mode RDMs be perennially reserved?

Any help would be appreciated

Regards,

DGN

[WessexFan]

Quick question: are the RDMs mapped to the host you are trying to vMotion to?

[FritzBrause]

Here is a similar thread:Accelerating the ESXi booting time duirng vmw_vaaip_cx loading ?

To my understanding, this flag is only used for MSCS RDMs (since it is shared between hosts/VMs).

To reduce overall boot time, SCSI reservation conflicts etc., zone the RDMs only to the hosts where the MSCS nodes are running (maybe one additional host for vMotioning the VMs).

The general approach/recommendation to present all LUNs to all ESX hosts is not useful for RDMs, in my opinion.

Using RDMs as spare as possible, maybe just for MSCS.

And present RDMs not to all ESX hosts.

Maybe others have different opinion. I use RDMs only for MSCS in my environment.

[digitalnomad]

Yes all RDMs are zoned to all hosts in the cluster

[digitalnomad]

Binding to a limited set of hosts within a cluster is not preferable...too limiting in management's opinion.

Personally I'd replace them all with VCS using VMDK's but the cost is prohibitive

[WessexFan]

I'd agree with VMDKs but such that it is.. are the RDM zones setup the exact same way? I'm sure you have already but they have some troubleshooting tips http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100373...