Two host shared storage? MD3000 MSA2012sa

[nbarsotti]

Hello,

I work for a small business with a two host ESX 4.0 custer. I currently have a StoreVault (NetApp) S500 with 12 x 500gb sata drives. It is way under powered for the type of VM's that we are running and the performance my end users need. During these hard economic times we cannot afford a nice beefy fiber channel SAS SAN. Since there are only two ESX hosts that will ever need to access this storage I was hoping I could get a Dell MD3000, HP MSA2012sa, or similar. Can these devices be setup so that both ESX hosts have SAS connectivity to the same LUNs for vmotions and DRS? These direct attached arrays seem like the best way to get a shared storage (2 nodes) and 3 GB/s sas and 15K drives. Please share your thoughts.

[stpeev]

Try the Hardware Compatibility List here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php. It may answer you questions if these devices can be used by ESX.

[admin]

Sure. In VMware 4.0 HCL, both storage arrays have been listed.

User can do vmotions, HA and DRS on shared LUNs between hosts and also do Storage Vmotion to different LUNs in same host.

I strongly agree to setup Shared SAS is the best fit for small business environment.

[s1xth]

Ahhh actually the MD3000 cant do HA or VMOTION...to do vmotion you need ISCSI and true shared storage. The MD3000 doesnt have that ability, unless you physically go in to the server and swap the conections to another server and physically MOUNT and and UNMOUNT the partition.

[nbarsotti]

Do you have an MD3000? I was under the impression it can. I know the MSA2012sa can. HP has writen a white paper on how to do it.

[s1xth]

From what Dell told me no, it cant. I would give them a call and get a straight answer from one of their storage engineers. I was close to buying an MD3000 and found this out, so I am readjusting my plan and going with iSCSI MD3000i which fully supports HA / FT and vmotion. Granted you could use storage vmotion but thats only in enterprise vsphere.....$$$$.

[admin · Accepted solution]

I am one of the VMware QA Engineer and I have been tested with DELL MD3000 SAS and HP MSA2012sa SAS storage array with ESX4.0 and all of them are listed in HCL.

ESX4.0 support HA, DRS, VMotion, Storage VMotion in SAS storage array from DELL MD3000, HP MSA2012sa and IBM DS3200.

You need to have supported hardware in order to setup FT.

-lawrence.

[nbarsotti]

Thank you for the response!

[s1xth]

Please explain how HA works with an md3000.... I was told by Dell that HA will not work because you can NOT share storage between two hosts, you can assign up to 4 servers to an md3000 but they act like DAS storage. This was explained to me by two different storage experts, plus if you some searching here on the forums you find countless posts saying the same. YES you can use the md3000 for esx4 but not for any HA features.. Please explain if you are saying it can because from what I am told its just not technically possible. Thanks!!

Sent from my Nokia phone

[admin]

Hi s1xth,

*

Here is the link

SAS Arrays

*

For SAS Arrays, if listed, VMware supports the following configuration, unless footnoted otherwise:

• Basic Connectivity - The ability of ESX hosts to recognize and interoperate with the storage array. This configuration does not allow for multipathing, any type of failover, or

sharing of LUNs between multiple hosts.

• Direct Connect - In this configuration, the ESX host is directly connected to the array (that is, no switch between HBA and the array). Windows Clustering is not supported in

this configuration.

• LUN sharing - The ability of multiple ESX hosts to share the same LUN.

• Multipathing - The ability of ESX hosts to handle multiple paths to the same storage device.

• HBA Failover - In this configuration, the ESX host is equipped with multiple HBAs connecting directly to the array. The server is robust to HBA failure only.

• Storage Port Failover - In this configuration, the ESX host is attached to multiple storage ports on the same array and is robust to storage port failures.

• Boot from SAS - SAS boot is supported unless explicitly stated in a footnote for a specific array.

Hope this help.

-lawrence.

[nbarsotti]

Hi S1xth,

I'm not sure when you talked to the Dell reps, but I know there was a major firmware upgrade for the md3000 that added new features, the ability for it to share LUNs might have happened then. It went from 6.XX to 7.XX.

[s1xth]

Hmm..interesting I will have to take a deeper look into this... Thanks for the heads up..

Sent from my Nokia phone

[Josh26]

You could well have had information from Dell which was incorrect.

Certification for this sort of thing is best done by VMWare. If it's on their HCL, it's supported. If Dell couldn't tell you about it, it just means you spoke to a tech who didn't know.

[s1xth]

So you can have four hosts attached to the md3000 and have access to a shared lun with this new firmware??? Wow, I guess I definitely talked to someone that didn't know.

Sent from my Nokia phone

[s1xth]

This is really good news, I am going to call my Dell rep tommorrow and find out more, I was going to go iscsi, and don't really need it right now. I am a smb so... this may work well for HA which what I need. Gotta find out about this new firmware!

Sent from my Nokia phone

[s1xth]

I wanted to post back on this issue, I spoke with another Dell engineer today, and he also confirmed that the MD3000 will NOT working with vmotion, HA, or storage vmotion, as it can NOT share luns. Are we sure they are not talking about the MD3000i?? Also, he said he contacted LSI, which is the company that makes the MD3000 and they also said that you can not do HA or anything with the MD3000 because its not shared storage. The device IS certified for ONE host on vpshere, NOT anything else.

Can anyone PLEASE confirm this? Thanks!

[nbarsotti]

Hi s1xth,

I don't have either an MD3000 or an MSA2012sa but I know it works with the HP. Here is a confirmation the link for HP, . I can't confirm anything for Dell.

Being that competing companies like Dell, HP, IBM, and Sun usually have very similar products that compete in the same market segment it just makes sense that Dell would enable that feature. In the SAS array segment between IBM DS3200, Sun Storagtek 2530, HP MSA2012sa, Dell MD3000, etc. I would be really suprised if HP was the only product that had that feature or likewise if Dell was the only product that did not have the shared LUN feature.

[s1xth]

According to Dell techs I have been talking to, they say that even though the MD3000 MAY have (they havent even agreed that this works..i dont understand why) the ability to share the LUN across different hosts its strongly not reommended due to corruption, and they are forcing me to go with a MD3000i. They are supposdly working with Vmware to have the MD3000 HCL updated to show this information. I am not sure what to do since it seems no one knows what they are talking about.....ehhhhh!!!

[nicklaz7]

wow, i can't believe that this works. i've been putting off getting shared storage for my small vmware environment due to price. this finally opens a huge door for better HA without throwing a tons of money at it.

we're a dell shop but i guess we'll have to use someone else's storage array. dell actually has documentation on their website using the md3000 in a HA config using xenserver. i was always confused why it worked with xen and not vmware.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/Citrix/EN/Solutions%20Guide/HTML/body.htm#wp1182223

[onsik]

MD3000 is SAS connected SAN box, maximum 4 hosts, MD3000i is iSCSI connected SAN box, so you can have more hosts connected

You manage those arrays from MDSM software installed on Windows machine - and you have option that host share the same virtual disk (LUNs) or not.

Bassically if you have host set up in cluster you can have shared VMs (LUNs), if you have 2 host which are not in the cluster and have access to the same LUNs and try to write at the same time to the same block that will cause data corruption.

Hope, that helps