Help me understand SCSI Reservation Conflicts?

[MiteeThoR]

My VCB Backups are getting SCSI Reservation Conflicts. I used to think this was the VMFS Locking mechanism but now I think this could be a different issue. I'm using

EMC Celerra iSCSI Target on DART 5.5 (on the HCL list)

ESX 3.01 using software iSCSI

Windows 2003 SP1, with VCB 1.02 and Microsoft iSCSI initiator

It's the VCB Server that sees the errors during backups. Is there any tweaks I can make to the software initiator to help increase "tolerance" for these reservations? Would switching to a hardware iSCSI HBA like a QLogic 4050 help this issue?

[pwc40]

Mitee, have you gotten anywhere with this problem?

[MiteeThoR]

no, I gave up for now. I'm attempting to use NFS instead of iSCSI. So far it's been all positives, I have snapshots, easy appliance based backups, etc. We run in a large, relatively low I/O environment so I think it's going to work ok for our needs.

It really sucks that a "supported" protocol is really NOT supported when it comes down to it but what else can I do...

[pwc40]

I'm an Engineer with an iSCSI company. We see problems with SCSI reservations throughout the VMware posts. We've changed the SCSI reserve release mechanism in our own product to eliminate the R/R problem.

If you could, post when/if you are able to get your problem resolved, and how, would be very appreciated.

Thnx

[MiteeThoR]

I have not solved the issue. Instead we are attempting to run NFS and use snap/copy's via NDMP as a backup. I would have liked to use iSCSI but until it's stable I can't afford to play around with it anymore.