SAN Swap out plan

[SC38103]

We have two hosts (boot from local storage) running VI3.5.0. They reside in a Datacenter (DC1) and are in a Cluster (Cluster A, DRS is enabled). They are attached to a Clariion FC SAN. I have 8 production VMs on a LUN in this SAN. I traded this SAN for a new model Clariion and I need do a SAN swap out.

THE PLAN

Installed two 300Gb drives (RAID1) in one of the ESX hosts.

Moved all of the VMs to this local storage (know there is risk here, made copy of VM files to desktop drive and backup VMs nightly via agent)

No storage in the SAN is now being used by the ESX hosts

I’M AT THIS POINT

Going to remove all of the LUNs from ESX hosts, remove the zoning, disconnect this SAN, and install the new SAN and rebuild new LUNs for ESX storage.

QUESTION: Are there any issues with what I am going to do? Should I turn off the DRS? Will the ESX hosts complain, or worst? So far everything has went well, I’m ready to remove LUNs from ESX hosts, just want to make sure I'm not missing something critical.

[weinstein5]

Yes I would disable DRS since the VMs are strored locally on one host DRS would not work - I am curious why didn't you use storage vmotion? swapping SANs is one of the reasons why VMware created it -

[SC38103]

I did use storage vmotion to move the VMs from SAN storage to the local storage. The reason I ask about the DRS is because when I click to disable I get a warning that the resource pools will be removed. If that’s all it does I’m OK, just don’t want anything worst. Thanks.

[blp848]

I think what is saying is what you might have done differently if you had enough switch ports was to configure the new SAN along side the old one and then Svmotion from one to the other.

But to answer your question though, since you have moved all the vm's to local storage disabling DRS won't affect anything since vmotion isn't possible. You will as it tells you lose the resource pools, but that is it.

Brian

[SC38103]

Have enough switch ports, just enough rack space. I must remove he existing SAN to install the new SAN. So, far sounds like I shouldn’t expect a disaster from removing the SAN connectivity. Thanks.

[blp848 · Accepted solution]

I would expect that you won't have any issues

[SC38103]

Thanks.