ISCSI

[BDorroh]

I've got a Dell Equallogics ISCSI array connected to two ESX 3.5 hosts in a cluster.

I've setup my Console port on NIC0; a vmotion kernel port on NIC1; a team of 2x nics for the ISCSI connection; and 2x nics for the VM traffic.

Question 1. - Having setup two Kernel ports, I noticed that VMware doesn't let you setup more than one VMKernel default gateway. The ISCSI array sits on a different subnet than the console and vmotion kernel ports, but trying to set the DFT on the iscsi kernel port didn't work, so we left it at the default. Not sure if that was right or wrong.

Question 2. - When looking at the ISCSI array, I only see connections coming in from the VMotion Kernel port. I would expect that when I did some vmotion tests. But when I fired up a VM, I would have expected to see the ISCSI Kernel port connecting to the Dell, but it does not. I appears that any and all connetions to the Dell come from the Vmotion Kernel port. Is that correct? Or should there only be one VMkernel port used for both vmotion and the ISCSI connection?

[dellboy]

In answer to question 1

The VMKernel port used for VMotion should be non-routable, however the VMKernel port used for iSCSI sometimes is. As such, I usually change the VMkernel gateway to one used by iSCSI.

If you’ve set the VMotion VMKernel up first, you’ll have to apply a gateway address within the VMotion subnet (VMware won’t let you enter the iSCSI VMKernel gateway at this time, if it’s on a different subnet). Just enter an address in the VMotion subnet, then once you’ve created the additional iSCSI VMKernel port, you can modify the VMKernel gatway in DNS and Routing section

In answer to question 2

No, you are correct in separating the VMotion and iSCSI traffic, with different VMKernel portgroups.

Possibly due to the VMkernel gateway currently being set to your VMotion subnet. What happens when you change VMKernel gateway to the iSCSI VMKernel gatway address, under DNS and Routing?