topic Re: ISCSI on ESXI in ESXi Discussions

ISCSI on ESXI

ajithkt22 — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 06:54:01 GMT

Hello All,

We have a requirment to connect ISCSI storage to few ESXi servers; the storage should be shared across all the ESXi servers. SO my query is which of the below is the best practice to create ISCSI targets

1) Create single ISCSI target and add all the ESXi hosts under this.

2) Create different ISCSI targets for each ESXi hosts.

An early response is much appreciated.

Thanks

Re: ISCSI on ESXI

YahyaZahedi — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 07:47:11 GMT

As I know, connecting an iscsi LUN to multiple targets and then presenting them to several ESXi hosts cause problems. Because each host connect using own target to storage LUN and it conflicts with the IO request.

Based on my experiences a single target is better because all ESXi hosts are active and only one target manage IO requests.

If your storage device support multipath input-output (MPIO), you can achieve greater throughput by using multiple NICs.

Pay attention you must present the target to all server.

Re: ISCSI on ESXI

ajithkt22 — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 10:22:59 GMT

Thanks.. so based on your suggestion i will create 2 iscsi targets and add all the ESXi hosts under these two targets for multipathing

Re: ISCSI on ESXI

YahyaZahedi — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 10:44:47 GMT

Yes, I suggest you read this fantastic document about multipathing in ESXi.

But I made mistake and you might be understood wrong. MPIO you can use multiple NIC or HBA to connect to single target which provides you better performance and reliability and load balancing. The previous post was corrected.

I am sorry for the mistake.