SAN multipathing problem

[frang1]

Hello,

I am having a hard time setting up multipath on ESX 3.5, the button is greyed out and i cant figure out why. I can see both vdisks on the SAN.

I have one ESX 3.5 server connected to a dual controller SAN. I have two virtual disks setup, one called vmachines and the other filestorage on the SAN. One is owened by controller A and the other is owned by controller B. The ESX server is connected DIRECTLY to the san array port 0 on controller a and port 0 on controller b. Now I know that the two different paths are working beacause if i disable controller a on the SAN then i lose connection to vservers but i still have access to filestorage. I checked the SAN to see if failover was active and it says it is so i dont know whats up. Any input would be great.

Equipment:

HP DL380 G5

MSA 2012i

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the forums - I thiml the issue is how you are connected to your SAN - with a direct connection to the SAN ports the host is not seeing the rudndant path - is you can place a switch in between the HBA would see the redundant path -

[frang1]

Thanks for the welcome! I understand that connecting both san controllers and the 2 ethernet ports on the esx server to a switch would provide more redundancy but I dont see how that would be the problem.

[weinstein5]

I assumes you were using fiber channel - what are the respective network addresses?

[frang1]

No its ISCSI. I have two vswitches setup, one for each controller as follors

vswitch1

service console - 192.168.0.7

vmkernal - 192.168.0.3

san Conroller A IP adress - 192.168.0.2

subnet - 255.255.255.0

vsiwtch2

service console - 192.168.1.7

vmkernal - 192.168.1.3

san Controller B IP address -192.168.1.2

subnet 255.255.255.0

[weinstein5]

The issue is with you networking configuration - because it is a direct connection to the iSCSI SAN when you disconnect the one of the connection - the remaining port can not connect to the datastore because there is no gateway to the other subnet - there are two ways to do this is by placing everything on the same subnet or on each vswitch create another service console port that sist on the other subnet - so on vswitch1 connect a service console port on the 192.168.1.x subnet and on vswitch2 create another service console port on 192.168.0.x subnet -

[frang1]

Ok i will be able to try that in a few. Just to clarify, i will create additional service consoles as followes

vswitch1

ISCSIbackup01

192.168.1.8

255.255.255.0

vswitch2

ISCSIbackup02

192.168.0.8

255.255.255.0

[weinstein5]

Actually after seeing you response and thinking about my answer I might have mistyped - it is not the service console ports your need but vmkernel ports but I do not think you can have multilpe vmkernel ports on a single vswitch - also if you are using the software iSCSI intiator your will need to make sure the service console port has access to the iSCSI system -

[frang1]

I was aware that there need to be a service console on the ISCSI switch that is why i put a service console in each. So should I try putting everything under one switch and same subnet?

[weinstein5]

That should work - with the 2 NIcs you will still accomplish multipathing -