Storage Upgrade

[Marekiaro79]

Dear all good morning,

I hope this is the right place to post my request, I need your support to make a storage replacement at a customer.

Infrastructure has 2 nodes (clustered) esxi 5.5 and a san connected in direct attach 10 GB (dual ctrl and redundant connection).

what do you think would be the best strategy to replace this storage without stopping the customer?

which storage do you recommend to keeps me compatible with the version of esxi installed?

Thanks and regards,

Marek

[HassanAlKak88 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Regarding the replaced storage is up to you and for any new HW you can read the datasheet and check the compatibility with the existing vSphere.

But regarding the replacement scenario and due to the existing redundancy that you have, it is very simple:

• unmap one leg from each server from the old storage
• connect the new storage to your SAN switches (if exist) otherwise connect the new storage to the unmapped legs on each server
• map these legs to new storage

For Map/Unmap, if you have SAN switches so these processes mean zoning between storage and servers.

After you complete the above, you create new datastores from the new storage and you do a storage migration from vSphere side.

[daphnissov]

I'll also add that ESXi 5.5 is way out of support, so your customer needs to also upgrade their vSphere to a supported version (at least 6.5).

[Marekiaro79]

Yes, it is out of support but the Cisco servers that the customare have, doesn't support (or are certified) for other ESXI version that installed 5.5.

[Marekiaro79]

Hi, the solution is sure the most indicated for my case.

On the new storage I can use the same IP configured in virtual switch or I need to work also on this configuration?

In this case, I have to respect the currently configured parameters - like MTU etc..

In the case I would to add a 10GB switch?

This because the customer have a D.R. Site with 1 server and 1 storage only for replicas.

The storage is not visible for this site cause direct attach and the cluster may be with 3 nodes and I can manage all storage also in a cluster.

what do you think about?

Thanks a lot for your precious advice.

[daphnissov]

Customer needs to then understand the risk of running vSphere in a production environment without support. Good luck.