VMWARE VMOTION and LUNs

[PScrib]

Hi all,

I've setup a VMWARE infastruture with 3 x ESX 3.5.0 - 82663 servers managed by a Virtual centre server 2.5 server. I've successfully tested using separate fibre channel SAN LUNs for each of the ESX servers and now want to test VMOTION using a single shared LUN.

I'm no SAN expert (we have someone else who does that in our organisation) so our SAN guy has created a LUN and presented it to our 3 ESX servers by "adding the WWN numbers to the LUN". Once added to VMWARE all the ESX servers automatically picked the new LUN up, without having to individually "add storage". So it appears this is the correct way of doing it(?).

Before I start using this setup in earnest can you confirm the above is the correct way to present a single LUN to multiple ESX servers and have I missed anything? After reading some stuff about VMOTION and LUNS, etc, it all seemed a bit easy.

[Yattong]

hey,

Usually you would have to "Add storage" to one ESX server, this will do the formatting and disk alignment for you. And then just do a refresh on all the other ESX servers (not "Add Storage") so that these server can see the LUN too.

Also make sure that the LUN is named the same on all 3 ESX servers.

and yes... it pretty much is that simple on the storage side.

Good Luck

[wgardiner]

And make sure you use the same LUN ID when presenting to all servers, ESX isn't happy if you allocate different LUN ID's for the same storage to different servers. This is only relevent if you are using a HP EVA though, I think the others don't let you change LUN ID per server anyway

[PScrib]

Thanks for your quick replies guys - looks like I was on the right track, but just wanted to double check.

[Yattong · Accepted solution]

Hey PScrib,

If we've helped, please allocate the correct points.