iSCSI Networking

[gr99]

I want to connect my ESXi 5.5. (Dell servers with Intel X710 10Gb/s NICs) system to an iSCSI SAN (EMC VNXe). My initial thoughts were to have a completely separate physical & logical network for the storage. But upon doing some RTFMing, it seems that all the VMKernel adapters must live on the same subnet which precludes the logical & physical separation of the SAN traffic from the management traffic. This is supposed to be due to limitations in ESXi's IP stack.

Yet I've found some docs from third-party vendors, that say this separation is the right way to do it.

What gives?

Thanks,

GTG

[continuum]

> it seems that all the VMKernel adapters must live on the same subnet

Do you have links to websites that say something like that ?

Sounds to me like you are reading the wrong blogs - I would stick to the manual of the VNXe instead.

[gr99]

From VMware:

"Therefore, it is considered best  practice to use iSCSI on trusted networks only and to isolate the traffic on separate physical switches or to leverage a private VLAN"

Plus the EMC Design guide recommends separating things out too.

GTG

[schepp]

The iSCSI and network traffic should be seperated, yes.

I think you are confusing the VMkernel on the same subnet thing. There are some documents about how to handle multiple VMkernels for iSCSI and NFS on the same subnet.

When you plan to use multiple iSCSI VMkernels, you need to enable port binding in vSphere, so that you can establish multiple paths to your array.

Tim