For those with MSA 23xxi or MSA 2000i SANs

[JRink]

Relates to anyone with a G1 or G2 model of the MSA2000 (with dual controllers)...

I see alot of conflicting information on setting up iSCSI in vSphere and NO official document from HP?

I am curious. If you have a MSA 2000i or MSA 23xxi with vSphere...

1. Do you have ESX setup with a) 1 vSwitch and 2 VMKernels (and 2 pNICs on that vSwitch), or do you have, b) 2 vSwitches each with 1 VMKernel (and 1 pNIC on each vSwitch)?? The iSCSI config document from VMWare for vSphere lists BOTH as possible config options around page 32 (I think.. from memory).

2. Are you using Fixed model, MRU (Most Recently Used), or Round Robin?

Just curious how others have this setup... Thanks.

JR

[mp125]

We are using an HP MSA 2312i G2 SAN with our VMware setup.

We do what you said in 1.a. - 1 vSwitch and 2 VMkernels

You need to read this: Ken's Great vSwitch Debate - it is excellent and will answer most if not all your questions.

[JRink]

Are you using Fixed, MRU, or Round Robin?

Also... On your vSwitch, your VMKernels are on the SAME network... ? In all the documentation I have seen the VMKernels are usually on a seperate logical network from each other. And ports A1 and B1 (on the SAN) would be on the same network together, while ports A2 and B2 would be on the same network. Are all four of your controller ports on the same logical network? This is just different than everything else I've read/seen.

JR

[JWalker101]

Hi JRink,

Agreed - no official best practice from HP on use with VMware so we ended up using a setup based on this article: Jeremy Waldrop's Blog.

Here's our setup. We use an HP MSA2324i with MRU pathing.

So far, works really well. We've tried pulling out cables and the fail-over between storage controllers is very fast.

All the best,

J

[JWalker101]

Hi mp125,

Thanks for linking that article. Very interesting reading.

Cheers,

J

[JRink]

I have been running with my MSA 2312i in production for about 2 weeks now. So far so good.

I ended up running with a single vDisk and have (2) 650GB LUNs (so far). The LUNS are setup as Datastores in vSphere. I also configured MRU for the pathing policy but went with a single vSwitch that has (2) pNICs and (2) VMKernels. It has been working really well and failover is fast.

I am happy with the setup so far.

JR

[JWalker101]

Great stuff. Good to hear it's working out.

One problem we did have with the MSA was expanding a RAID6 vDisk by adding 2 disks - it took the best part of a week to complete So plan far ahead for your storage needs!

[JRink]

Not surprised. Even setting up the initial RAID configuration takes forever, nearly 24 hours for a RAID5 array consisting of 11 disks. It's a bit faster if you create the vDisk offline however....

I am very happy with the IOMeter results. I tested the SAN using RAID 5, 6, 10.

[Valley911]

Guys,

Sorry for digging up an old thread but I just recently received a MSA2324i for our vSphere environment. I am glad to hear folks have been happy with the unit and seen good perfromance. One thing I was interested in is I noticed that no one seems to be running the unit with Round Robin multipathing policy. I believe that this unit is consider an active/active array. Was/is there a particular reasoning for this?

TIA,

-Jason

[JV1492]

I have an MSA 2312i, and am having a very hard time getting it set up. Can I reach you offline to discuss ?

[DSTAVERT]

Welcome to the forums. You should create your own post and describe your situation. Give as much information about your hardware and and what you have done to get it set up.

[JV1492]

Did that. 22 views and 0 responses. I would love to hear from either JRink or mp125. Sent each one a private message. No response.

Any suggestions ?

[Valley911]

JV1492,

I just finished setting up our unit. Feel free to ping me and I can see if I can help you out...

-Jason

[sa2057]

Hi Jason,

Sorry for posting my question on this old post. I already posted my question but no response.

Here is my  question

I have configured my MSA2312i and can see all the luns on ESXi 4.1. But unable to see the lun on my secondary esxi host

Site A

ESXi host

VMk1 (iSCSI) - 10.1.1.50

Internal cisco switch : 10.1.1.x  

HP MSA2312i ( physically located at Site A)

Management IP: 192.168.23.169

Port A (iSCSI); 10.1.1.55 , 255.255.255.0 , 0.0.0.0 ------- Connected to internal Switch

Port B (iSCSI); 192.168.23.170  , 255.255.255.0 , 0.0.0.0----- Connected to CISCO switch 

I can see the luns only if I add 10.1.1.55 via static discovery  on Site A.Unable to see the luns on 192.168.23.170 via static discovery or dynamic discovery.

We have EMC storage configured which works fine with out any problems.

Any help or advise is appreciated.

Thanks

SA