HP Logical Server Management Best Practices

In addition to this file-based storage definition for the VM, the Matrix OE supports RDM (Raw Device Mapping) in the

VMware, Microsoft, and HP Integrity VM environments. Please see the compatibility guide for more information. This

is a key enabler for cross-technology logical servers which can move from a physical system to a virtual system and

back to a physical system. Each VM can have multiple RDM volumes, represented by one or more storage pool

entries. They should be of type “SAN Storage Entry”; SPM integration does not yet extend to RDM volumes. The

storage volumes should be presented to the appropriate server HBA initiator WWNs for all Virtual Connect servers

and VMware hypervisors which will require access to the volumes (i.e., all potential targets for the logical server).

When using the VMware RDM feature, the storage is specified via storage pool entries in a manner similar to

physical server storage specification. The storage can be pre-defined (residing in the storage pool for that portability

group) can be defined at the time of logical server definition. Figure 35 shows two choices available from the storage

pool. Figure 36 shows the result of selecting one entry and clicking the “Insert Pool Entry” button. The selection and

Insert Pool Entry button will be disabled if there is no available storage in the pool for the portability group (or if the

virtual machine logical server is not a VMware virtual machine).

Figure 35: Storage pool entry choices when defining storage for a virtual machine logical server

Figure 36 shows the SAN storage pool entry in the Storage Assignments table and the volume from that storage pool

entry (a 10 GB boot volume with RAID0) is shown in the Storage Volumes table. The storage pool entry could have

contained multiple volumes (and the volume marked as boot would have been placed first in the Storage Assignments

list), or the administrator can select multiple pool entries while defining the logical server.