iSCSI and fibre from different ESXi hosts to the same LUNs and datastores

[AlfPB]

Hello,

We currently have a vCenter Server 4 farm with 4 ESXi U1 hosts connected via iSCSI to an EMC CLARiiON CX4 SAN. We would like to add a new host to the farm. The host has a fibre channel adapter.

Is it possible to have our current hosts (via iSCSI) and this new host (via fibre channel) connected to the same datastores ? According to EMC the SAN will be able to do this, but I have not found a reference to this exact scenario, only a case where the same host cannot connect to the SAN using both protocols, but this is not my case.

Many thanks in advance.

[mcowger]

Accessing the same device via different protocols is explicitly unsupported by both EMC and VMware.

[AlfPB]

Hello, thanks for your response. This is odd because this morning I received an answer to this question from EMC support saying this:

"Yes, you can present the host which is connected using fiber channel to the storage group which already has hosts connected through ISCSI."

What I found when looking for information was that it was not supported to connect the same host via both iSCSI and fibre. My scenario is different: some hosts connect via iSCSI and another one would connect via fibre to the same LUNs / datastores.

mcowger, could you please confirm that your answer applies to my scenario as well?

[mcowger]

Applies to your scenario as well:

“VMware ESX/ESXi support both Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage. However, VMware and EMC do not support connecting VMware ESX/ESXi servers to CLARiiON Fibre Channel and iSCSI devices on the same array simultaneously.”

source: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h1416-emc-clariion-intgtn-vmware-wp.pdf

The EMC array will work just fine, but VMware do not support it.

[AlfPB]

Thank you. I will connect via iSCSI then, as the other hosts.