SAN connectivity questions

jonesnet57 · ‎12-08-2008

I hope this is the right place to post this, apologies if not and if i can be directed more approprately will re-post

We have a situation wherein we have a physical windows 2003 server connected to an EMC SAN for 2 services, one of which is IIS, we are required to move the IIS service to two vm's in a 5 node ESX 3.0 setup and have connectivity to the SAN LUN from both the original server for it's access and the 2 vm's as well.

The LUN is connected on one group for the current physical server, the ESX's are in seperate clariion group.

I understand this should be achievable with RDM but cannot work out the technicalities.

We are assuming the Clariion group the ESX servers are in needs to be added to the LUN that the current windows server uses

Questions we have:

1) Does the windows server or apps running on it need shutting down, and if so when

2) Do the ESX boxes or the specific VM's or both need to be configured for the physical disk connectivity, and what process is best used.

3) Any restrictions or problems that may arise from this configuration

thanks in advance for any help / assistance

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Texiwill · ‎12-08-2008

Hello,

We have a situation wherein we have a physical windows 2003 server connected to an EMC SAN for 2 services, one of which is IIS, we are required to move the IIS service to two vm's in a 5 node ESX 3.0 setup and have connectivity to the SAN LUN from both the original server for it's access and the 2 vm's as well.

So you want the same LUN to be accessible to a physical host as well as the 2 VMs, or are you considering making copies of the LUN? If it is the same LUN then you are talking about a cluster of VMs using some form of cluster aware filesystem within the RDM.

The LUN is connected on one group for the current physical server, the ESX's are in seperate clariion group.

The LUN needs to be seen by the ESX hosts.

I understand this should be achievable with RDM but cannot work out the technicalities.
We are assuming the Clariion group the ESX servers are in needs to be added to the LUN that the current windows server uses

I would add this LUN to the ESX group and not the ESX group of LUNs to the windows server gorup.

Questions we have:
1) Does the windows server or apps running on it need shutting down, and if so when

When you do the P2V.

2) Do the ESX boxes or the specific VM's or both need to be configured for the physical disk connectivity, and what process is best used.

Present the LUN to ESX. Do not do anything else within the VIC or ESX. When you create the VM add a System LUN/Raw Disk Map to the VM. The LUN should be choosable.

3) Any restrictions or problems that may arise from this configuration

Could be. If you want to share the RDM between multiple VMs, you need a cluster aware file system on the RDM. You also need to read through http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/vi3_35_25_u1_mscs.pdf and create your Virtual Machines accordingly. I know you are not using MSCS, but the method to create the VMs applies to all shared disk clusters.

If it was me, I would create multiple VMDKs and P2V all disks into ESX ignoring the 'LUN'.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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weinstein5 · ‎12-08-2008

Welcome to the forums -

1) To do the rearranging of the groups no you do not need to shut down the windows VMs but once you add the RDM you will need to shut down the IIs server -

2) If they are both to access RDMs then yes you will need set up for RDMS for both - If they both are going to be accessing the same RDM then I assume you are setting up an MSCS cluster fo rthe IIS services - in which case you might want to check out - this is for esx 3.0

3 No problems that IO can see -

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jonesnet57 · ‎12-08-2008

Thanks for those replies, I guessi should also have said the VM's for IIS already exist in a "farm" and they are having the additional websites served from them but requiring access to the LUN, the existing physical server is staying in-situ for the time being running a bespoke database that the client does not want to be virtualised, therefore we cannot P2V it as a whole.

Texiwill · ‎12-08-2008