drivers for SAN on esx3.0

[bobst_martin]

hello all,

i'm using a SAN with clariion cx400/600 and PowerPath is not available for VMWare, only for "regular linux". so I have only failover path and no load balancing (for 1 LUN)

what about the other SAN Storage ? HDS, NetApps, HP, IBM, PILLAR, ...

IBM (commercials) answer me that I can install "drivers for SVC" without trouble, and then I wil have load balancing, and I don't lost "support" from VMWare, is it right ? is it same for other storage ?

thanks for your feed back.

HB

[AMcCreath]

PowerPath is not requried as ESX has it' own MultiPath utility. By nature the CX range does NOT load balance, it is an active/standby configuration. Only when you use SYMMETRIX do you get activ/active load balanced SANs.

You can install Navisphere on ESX if you need though (see link below)

https://powerlink.emc.com/nsepn/webapps/btg548664833igtcuup4826/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/Te...

[kkorasak]

Bonjour Martin,

When using ESX, you do not need to install PowerPath. Multipathing is installed "by default" with ESX. On the other hand, you do not have load-balancing just the failover between the 2 hba's.

It is the same with other SAN vendors.

Kang

[kkorasak]

of course Navisphere agent (Linux) can be installed on ESX to communicate with your Clariion.

[bobst_martin]

I don't agree with you, I have load balancing between 2 hba on my cx600 with powerpath on windows servers.

windows with 2 hba : 6 paths, 3 active 3 stand bye

ESX with 2 hba : 6 paths, 1 active 5 stand bye

IO on VM windows is 3 times lower than non VM windows, because 1 path is full instead of 3 paths full

I'm not speaking about naviagent to register manually or automatic, this is not the question, and it work well.

I'm really speaking about IO between ESX and VMFS

I don't want also RAW device, because I need to move from ESX #1 to ESX # 2, and only raw device mapping is supported, so VMFS is the slower point.

[bobst_martin]

Bonjour Martin,

.....

It is the same with other SAN vendors.

Kang

whaou, what a pity, thanks

[Security_Financ]

You can create multiple LUNs and denote each path as active for different paths. This allows you to take advantage of all paths if you array supports it.

Tom