Switches for ESXi iSCSI not on the LAN - is this a normal configuration?

[imgs]

Hello,

I have a Dell PowerEdge R610 connected to a Dell PowerVault MD3200i with two Dell PowerConnect 5524 switches in between them. The R610 and MD3200i are connected with iSCSI.

The Dell switches are not accessible from the rest of the LAN even though their IP addresses are in the same range as the rest of the LAN - so I can only log into the switches by bringing a PC into the server room and setting it up next to the switches. I'm guessing that some sort of block was implemented when the switches were installed (no one knows if that's the case or even who setup the switches in the first place).

My question is, is this the normal procedure for a setup like this? Is there a good reason not to have these switches accessible on the LAN?

Thanks in advance!

David

[jburen]

AFAIK this is not a normal setup. You would connect the servers (and the storage device) to the switches. But in order to separate the different types of traffic you would implement VLANs. Otherwise you would need another set of switches to connect your server to the LAN (where the clients reside).

[imgs]

Thanks for the quick reply...I should have mentioned that there is indeed another switch, a dumb TP-Link switch which is connected to both the R610 host and the MD32001 SAN.

I'm still wondering if there's a need to have the two Dell switches not accessible from the LAN? It would be a lot easier if I could access the Dell switches web GUI from my workstation rather than having to setup a separate PC in the server room.

[jburen]

What I usually see is an ESXi host connected to two uplink switches. This is for redundancy. You could connect your storage to the same switches and use VLANs to separate the traffic. These switches are then connected to the client network so your clients can connect to the VMs that are on the ESXi host. Makes sense? So using only one switch is not something I would recommend. For a lab perhaps but not for production.

What I don't understand is that when your Dell switches are not accessible from the LAN, how is the server connected to the LAN?