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Hazz
Contributor
Contributor
‎07-30-2008 06:48 AM
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iSCSI direct ethernet connection?

Hi!

I'm a bit of a noob about this... ?:|

Is it possible to connect an iSCSI device directly to one or two physical networking cards on an ESX 3.0 server?

The purpose is to avoid the use of an ethernet switch to hopefully get better performance and security.

If it's possible, should I use an ethernet crossover cable?

Thanks in advance!

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎07-30-2008 06:53 AM
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Yep, you can directly connect it directly to your storage as long as your can present your targets to your inititators. The only caveat to using traditional NIC's vs using a NIC with TOE is that iSCSI is very CPU intenstive, if this is for a single ESX Server and it's not critical to get the most out of your resources (cpu/memory) then you can stick with your normal NICs. Though if you're looking to maximize your physical hosts resources you should look at getting HBA with TOE (TCP/IP Offload Engine) which will take the strain of processing iSCSI packets off of the ESX Server and onto the card itself.

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎07-30-2008 06:53 AM
Jump to solution

Yep, you can directly connect it directly to your storage as long as your can present your targets to your inititators. The only caveat to using traditional NIC's vs using a NIC with TOE is that iSCSI is very CPU intenstive, if this is for a single ESX Server and it's not critical to get the most out of your resources (cpu/memory) then you can stick with your normal NICs. Though if you're looking to maximize your physical hosts resources you should look at getting HBA with TOE (TCP/IP Offload Engine) which will take the strain of processing iSCSI packets off of the ESX Server and onto the card itself.

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