VirtualCentre and SAN attached Virtual Machines

[The_eternal_lea]

We are putting VC on a physical blade server. We will have SAN attached VM's.

Does the VC server need to be SAN attached to manage SAN attached Virtual machines?

We do intend to use VCB.

Thanks Shorne

[BUGCHK]

VC itself does not need a SAN connectivity - it talks to the ESX servers to do things like VMFS creation.

VMs are in most cases not really SAN-attached - they are attached to an emulated parallel SCSI HBA (the VMkernel shields the access via VMDK, RDM or raw LUN) unless they connect via an emulated NIC talking iSCSI.

[MR-T]

Everything BUGCHK said I second.

When you come to use VCB, you will need the proxy to be SAN attached, but don't use the VirtualCenter for this purpose.

I'm not 100% if it's still an issue, but it was certainly said that you shouldn't run both VCB and VC on the same box.

[The_eternal_lea]

VC itself does not need a SAN connectivity - it talks

to the ESX servers to do things like VMFS creation.

VMs are in most cases not really SAN-attached - they

are attached to an emulated parallel SCSI HBA (the

VMkernel shields the access via VMDK, RDM or raw LUN)

unless they connect via an emulated NIC talking iSCSI.

Hi - I appreciate the responses to date!

I was advised by a supplier that " The Virtual Centre server does not need to have access to the SAN LUN's unless VCB is being used".

However, another qualified source advised we would not.

Well we are looking at using VCB and as the project implimentation begins on monday (and we may need a new HBA for the blade that is on a 5 day lead time.....)

So just to be sure - the answer is that the VC server does not need to be SAN attached to managed SAN attached VM's when VCBs are being used.

[esiebert7625]

Here's a good doc that describes all this with diagrams...

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_intro_vi.pdf

Also good reference for concolidated backups...

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_consolidated_backup.pdf

[psharpley]

You could save on hardware if you run VC as a VM.

Good: Cheaper and realises the benefits of the VI investment you've made.

Bad: May not be scalable for v-large numbers of VM's. Not preferred by VMware.

DRS and HA (of course) works, I've done lots of installs using this method and it works fine.