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IRLMike
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Contributor

ESX 3.5 & HP AiO1200 Connectivity

My first post and I'm hoping someone out there will come to my rescue.

Obviously very new to ESX and I am encountering a problem connecting ESX to my new ISCSI HP1200 box.

New install of ESX on HP DL380 G5

New install of HP AiO 1200 box also.

I have created the VMKernal connection and a service console for it. I have enabled the ESX software initiator and added the target (gone backwards and forwards with the enabling and disabling CHAP auth to no avail).

I have allowed the traffic via the ESX Firewall within ESX command line and through the Infrastructure Client.

have gone through many posts, and even have HP doco with step by step processes on how to configure but nothing is working.

I can ping backwards and forwards no problem.

Any help much appreciated and please excuse the dumb questions I may ask in response.

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9 Replies
markwci
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if you go into the computer management mmc on the aio, you will see the iscsi target, you need to add each host to the target. this is not documented anywhere.

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JRink
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If you still have problems with this, let me know. I have an AIO1200 with iSCSI as a datastore on my ESX 3.5 server.

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IRLMike
Contributor
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Apologies for not updating this earlier.

What I had found was forget about the AIO Wizards etc that are supposed to help you with setting up the storage and do it manually. There is some documentation on how to do this but it is not completley correct. Piecing various documents together I managed to get this working. Many thanks for the replies. I was in a bit of a hurry with the install at the time and once completed had forgetten completley about the forum.

Thankfully the install went fine and we managed to install a DL380 with the AIO, move all legacy apps over to the new virtual environment and have a fully working w2k3 domain and Exch07 up and running.

Thanks for the replies guys. Hopefully I'll figure out how to close this.

Mike

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koit
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Good to hear you got it sorted out.

AIO1200 and ESX 3.5 is not officially supported by VMware and HP.

Do you have any issues?

I have a MSA60 SAS system connected to my AIO1200 box.

How many mid I/O intensive VM's do you think the AIO can handle?

Regards

Bernt Torbjornsen

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IRLMike
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I'm pretty sure the AiO1200 is supported by VMWare as I went through the HCL when first piecing all the hardware together.

To answer your question on the I/O intensive:

At present the AiO holds 3 VM's, an Exchange 2007 SP1 Server with approx 100 users and a large public folder store which gets fairly hammered all day everyday, this is also a DC/GC. Another server that runs Mail Marshall and holds the business application which isn't too itensive and the third being used as a File and Print Server.

From what we have found so far the exchange server does like to use as much ram as it can, but in general looking at the daily running of the system on a whole I would imagine we could most definately run another 5 VM Servers in this environment (that would be a conservative guess). So I would say 8-10 VM's easily.

Overall we haven't even really tweaked the system much apart from making sure we followed best practices when setting the system up.

The Host system is a HP DL380, dual quad core processors, 16GB RAM and 3 146GB SAS drives in a raid 6 set with one extra hdd as a hot swap/failover drive. We also put in an extra NIC ( PT1000 Quad I think it was.)

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pofahl
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I am having some issues with the exact same setup, I'm getting an error at the storage allocation part in the "host a user-defined app" section. what steps did you take to do this manually?

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IRLMike
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I'm gonna have to go back through my documentation for how I went about it so please bear with me. What I can tell you straight away is the HP doco for ESX & the 1200 using the wizaed is a no go.

Will let you know when i find my doco.

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JRink
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I found using the ASM was a joke. Here's a couple of notes I wrote down during my setup process... (I have one drive in the AIO used as NAS storage, the other drive is setup for use with iSCSI)

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HP AIO 1200 Notes

Important – Using the Share Folder Wizard and iSCSI Application Wizard in the AIO Storage System Management (ASM) software does not allow you to have those volumes/folder span across all physical drives for optimal performance. Instead, create the array and logical drives MANUAL in HP's Array Configuration Utility.

To create a share folder/drive spanning across all physical drives in a single RAID array:

1. Create the RAID-5 array using disks 3-11 in HP Array Configuration Utility

2. Configure the Array to use disk 12 as a hot spare

3. Create a logical drive of 1.4TB (this will be used for NAS folders)

4. Create a 2nd logical drive of 500GB (this will be used for iSCSI SAN drives)

When both logical drives are created, go to Disk Management and initialize both drives as the E: and F: drive. Create a single partition in each disk, quick format the drive as NTFS.

To create NAS shares (on the 1.4TB drive)

1. go to the E: drive and create the necessary folders you wish to use as shared folders and share them accordingly.

2. Refresh the AIO Storage System Management (ASM) software via the Actions menu.

To create an iSCSI drive (on the 500GB drive)

1. Install the iSCSI Initiator on the windows server you want to add a drive to.

a. Start the iSCSI Initiator program

b. Copy the iSCSI initiator node name on the General tab.

c. Set the Target Portal IP address on the Discovery tab to the AIO device

2. Start the iSCSI Target program on the AIO

a. Create a new iSCSI Target

b. Specify the iSCSI target name (eg: server.domain.com)

c. Specify the IQN Identifyer (this is the iSCSI Initiator node name you previously copied)

d. Create a virtual disk for the newly created iSCSI target

3. On the server with the iSCSI Initiator. refresh the Discovery and Target page so the disk becomes available.

Note 1 - When assigning security permissions to shared folders, make sure LOCAL administrators have full control otherwise ASM cannot read disk usage on the folder

Note 2 - Misc ESX Info.. When creating a LUN for ESX over iSCSI, I recommend NOT using the ASM to create a “user defined application”. Using that method will not allow you to specific which drive the iSCSI LUN will be created on. Instead, the iSCSI Target application should be used to create the LUN manually. (For reference, you can create one via the ASM to get the proper configuration information.)

-


Anyways, those are just some notes I took when doing this.... in THIS case, iSCSI was for a Windows Server to the AIO. but, the principal for setting the iSCSI Target and Virtual Disks is the same with ESX. Anyways... ASM is horrible... do it manually.

JR

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Urban1
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Curious if you found you doc?

Also did you setup a separate network for the iSCSI traffic vs. your file/application traffic? If so can you shed some light here as well.

Thanks.

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