Has anyone set up vSphere with an HP MSA yet?

[Sly]

I know it is not in the HCL, but I was wondering if anyone has set up their HP MSA 2000 series SAN with vSphere yet? If so, how did your installation go?

[AntonVZhbankov]

I have HP MSA 1500 FC and 2012 FC working with vSphere. No issues.

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VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[maishsk]

MSA 2012SA

I have successfully deployed with this hardware without issue

Maish

Virtualization Architect & Systems Administrator

[VirtuallyDesper]

I recently migrated our MSA1500 (+MSA30 & MSA20) to our DR site to be used by our 2 node DL380 G5 cluster. It was originally an ESX 3.5 set up. Upon installing ESX 4.0, the one issue we did have was that if we had the MSA1500 connected, the install could not see the local storage (P400 Controller based RAID 5). Once we disconnected the FC cables, install went ok. However, every time we rebooted the newly upgraded host, it would stall on loading the 'VSD' component while the MSA1500 was connected. Once again, we disconnected the FC cable and it would reboot fine. This could be an issue if you are remotely patching your servers without any kind of ILO interface.

Check the below thread for more info.

Steve

[jasonboche]

Currently running vSphere on an MSA1000 in my lab.

[i]Jason Boche, vExpert[/i]

[boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist|http://www.boche.net/blog/][/i]

[VMware Communities User Moderator|http://www.vmware.com/communities/content/community_terms/][/i]

[Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader|http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmug/us-central/minneapolis][/i]

[ROM13]

I did.

I had an ESX 3.5 cluster on a MSA 2012-fc, i migrated it to ESX 4 -> no issue, but you need to be careful to LUN pathing (fixed), because of MSA design (Active/active, but each volume is presented on only one controller)

I bought another MSA2012-fc for another ESX 4 cluster, still ok.

Just one point i still don't understand. On 3.5 i saw only disks when i scan my HBA's. Now i can see another type of stockage called "Enclosure". Seems like a controller, but still not sure. Otherwise, everything's fine.

[JesperBerth]

I have just installed a HP MSA 2324sa with dual controllers against a HP c3000 with two blades running vSphere, no problems regarding SAN

[riccabarg]

Hi Anton, I'm experiencing some problem with my MSA1500 and ESX4U1. Sometimes the esx hosts loose connectivity with the LUNs for some minutes and the VM are viewed as inaccessible. In the vmkernel log I can see that ESX is unable to correctly sense the path to the LUN. Please notice that I don't have the active/active firmware. Do you suggest to switch to the V7 Active/Active firmware? In this case which kind of policy for the multipath should I use (MRU or fixed)?

Thanks in advance,

Riccardo

[J-D]

I suppose you used fixed path and made sure every ESX uses the same path? So no MRU for the MSA 2000.

[WellsITman]

Has anyone got an MSA1500 working on ESX 4.1? I have 2 3.5U4 hosts connected to a MSA1500 and a MSA2012fc. I added a new ESX4.1 host and it can only see the 2012fc, it wont see the MSA1500.