What is the best practice for iSCSI VM storage?

[ZFSRocks]

So, as I was going through the vSphere 5 Evaluation Guide I created 3 iSCSI targets on my SAN because that is what they said to do. I then spread the test VMs evenly across all three just because. I didn't see any other mention of 3 targets and why they had me create them or how I was supposed to use them. Now I am getting ready to start the actual migration to virtual of production resources and I am wondering what I should be doing. What is the best practice for this? One iSCSI target for all the VMs on the SAN? One iSCSI target for each VM?

Thanks,

Stephen

[aravinds3107]

Welcome to the Community..

Refer the below documents

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmware-multipathing-configuration-software-iSCSI-port-bind...

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/09/a-multivendor-post-on-using-iscsi-with-vmware-vs...

[eeg3]

What SAN are you using? Best practices will depend on your vendor. What are you doing currently for multipathing?

[ZFSRocks]

I am using FreeNAS 8 and at this point, I don't have any multipathing... yet.

It is a 16 bay Supermicro box with 4 NICs. The 3 esxi hosts each have 2 NICs. Right now it is all going through a Cisco switch with vmotion and iSCSI on different subnets and isolated with Port VLANs.

Stephen

[ZFSRocks]

Let me re-iterate my original question. On my SAN, should I have a unique iSCSI target for each VM or should I have 1 target for all my VMs?

Stephen

[Rumple]

In terms of storage design, there is nothing that states what is best in terms of how many volumes...its generally accepted to have no more then 10-20 vm's on a single block storage volume due to scsi reservations although thats becoming less of an issue now, but most of us still follow it in some respects.