HP LeftHand SAN Solutions Support Document - User Manual - User Manual VSA 7.0 SP1 for VMware

10 Chapter 1
Configuration Requirements
The following prerequisites are required for LeftHand Networks to support
your virtual SAN for production use.
• A qualified server running VMware ESX Server 3.0.x. Qualified servers
are listed in VMware ESX Server 3.0.x systems compatibility guide, which
can be found at http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_systems_guide.pdf.
• 1GB of memory reserved.
• A single virtual CPU with at least 2000 MHz reserved.
• A connection to a virtual switch with at least a Gigabit
network connection.
• A virtual disk with 5 GB to 2 TB (2047 sectors) of space located on internal
SCSI disk storage, or direct attached SCSI storage that is not accessible
from more than one physical server. (Note that the SAN/iQ OS consumes
a small amount of the available space.) This virtual disk must be
connected to SCSI address 1:0.
• All virtual disks for the VSA must be configured as independent and
persistent to prevent VM snapshots from affecting them.
• The VMFS datastore for the VSA must not be shared with any other VMs.
• Two or more VSAs on separate physical servers with 2-way replication,
and a Failover Manager is the minimum configuration for high
availability with automatic failover.
• Two or more VSAs on separate physical servers can be clustered with a
Virtual Manager for manual failover capability.
Best Practices
Other configuration recommendations are useful to improve the reliability
and performance of your virtual SAN. Consider implementing as many of
these best practices as possible in your virtual SAN environment.
Each VSA should
• Have a virtual switch comprised of dual Gigabit Ethernet or more.
Providing network redundancy and greater bandwidth improves both
performance and reliability.