We've been using VI3 (ESX3.5) with Apple XServe RAID storage (standard FC array) for several years with no problem (started with ESX 3.0). Although this array is not officialy supported, it works just fine and VMware always helped us with it, even though it is not on their HCL. But we recently attempted to upgrade one of our hosts from VI3 (ESX 3.5) to vSphere (ESX4) and we immediately noticed some stability issues.
We first upgraded VirtualCenter 2.5 to vCenter 4.0, with no apparent problems. Then, after evacuating VMs away from one of the 3.5 hosts, we upgraded this particular host to 4.0 and noticed no apparent problem either (everything in "green", system stable, etc...). But we noticed problems only when we attempted to move VMs back to the 4.0 host.
The problem may or may not be related to the storage, and we need to identify the cause. But VMware refuses to help and simply states that we need to get a different storage unit (which we can't). So we were wondering if anyone out there had some luck with ESX4 and Xserve. While none of the VMs have been migrated to the 4.0 host yet, some of the mainsymptoms we are experiencing (while a given VM is still under the 3.5 host) are the following:
