Shared subnetwork for iSCSI network?

[crescendas]

We have SANmelody and Equal Logic SANs and we have always setup separate but common/shared subnet for our SAN storage. However, we are shock to see a warning from Open-E when we attempt to setup and use our common shared subnet for iSCSI network. Why is this so?

If Open-E is not able to use a common subnet for all the ethernet ports, does this mean that we can't setup NIC teaming since the ethernet ports must be all on difference subnet? Does this apply to other SAN storage like SANmelody and Equal Logic too?

[habibalby]

Hello,

I faced this issue with Open-e... Open-e uses MPIO as Nic Teaming, each interface must be on different subnet and static route must be entered between both subnets.. This way it should work.

This also applies to the EMC AX-, each AX comes with two storage processors, each SP has got two ports, each port has different subnet. This way MPIO works and when you bind it with ESX VMKernel.

Hope it helps,

Thanks,

[crescendas]

Thanks for the helpful reply. I will try to figure out how to setup the static route.

btw, since I have only 2 ESXi servers, I am thinking of connecting Open-E directly to the ESXi and bypass the switches. Any potential issue with such a setup?

[crescendas]

May I know how you configure static route as it keep telling me that my static route is invalid.

Open-E states that either each interface is on different subnet or we need to set static route for same subnet. I don't think we need static route if all the interfaces are on different subnet right? It will be a headache to configure 4 different subnets and VLANs on our switch just to handle this.