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InfoEE
Contributor
Contributor

Access to SAN HP MSA1000 very slow in ACTIVE/ACTIVE mode

I needed to upgrade my ESX servers from version 3.0.3 to 3.5.0U3.

To do that, I had to upgrade the firmware of the fiber controllers of our HP MSA1000 from the version 4.48 (ACTIVE/PASSIVE mode) to the version 7.00 which set the controllers in ACTIVE/ACTIVE mode.

Since we did that, all is working BUT the performance of the SAN is 4 times slowler than before. I saw it when I compressed and transferred large files.

Any idea how it can be solved?

Thanks in advance,

Eric

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7 Replies
Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

Moved to ESX 3.5 forum.

I think however that you will need to contact HP on this one. I would check to make sure you are balancing your loads over the controllers properly. I never upgraded my MSA1000 to Active/Active.


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

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Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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Lightbulb
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Check out "Migrating to active/active controllers in VMware environments"

As has been noted make sure you balance your LUNs across controllers.

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InfoEE
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

I already contacted HP but not yet got any answer.

Thank you,

Eric

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depping
Leadership
Leadership

This is very important indeed, make sure every single ESX host connects to the LUN using the same Storage processor... otherwise the ownership will be swapped from left to right and back again every time a VM accesses it.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator

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InfoEE
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for the answer.

There is only one LUN for the moment.

How can I check which Storage Processor is used ?

Eric

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BUGCHK
Commander
Commander

> will be swapped from left to right

Not with active/active firmware. There is a 'performance optimization' to transfer logical disk ownership if the non-owning controller receives more host I/O for some time, but it does not happen for every access.But you are right that all servers should access a given logical disk through the same MSA controller to offload the inter-controller link.

A very important step is to check the operating system profile on all connections - if I remember correctly, it should be "Linux". The "default" profile is not correct.

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depping
Leadership
Leadership

I know, it was a bold statement....

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator

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