Deployment of VMFS and RDM LUN through ESX VSphere and RSM Server (February 2010)

Introduction
Virtualization is one of the most crucial elements in the overall growth of an IT
industry. In the past few years, the IT scenario has changed. The IT organizations
are strategically investing in virtualization technologies. The VMware server
virtualization technology transforms data centers into a shared pool of resources,
which can be dynamically combined, tiered, provisioned, and accessed through an
intelligent network. The standardization of servers and hardware resources
drastically improves the efficiency, availability, and managebility of resources and
reduces the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). It also enables IT organizations to
deploy and scale resources rapidly, on-demand to match business and application
requirements.
The VMware virtualization technology provides the ESX VSphere virtualization
software that is independent of any operating system and can be installed on server
hardware. The ESX VSphere virtualization software comes with the Virtual Machine
File System (VMFS) that can host several guest operating systems such as Microsoft
Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS. The HP StorageWorks Replication Solutions
Manager (RSM) software in combination with the ESX VSphere virtualization
software can be used to create and mount VMFS and RDM LUNs from an HP
Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) to a VMware guest OS. The HP StorageWorks RSM
software can be installed on a standalone system, a server, or on a virtual machine
to manage VMFS and RDM LUNs.
The purpose of this whitepaper is to assist SAN administrators to configure VMFS
and RDM LUNs using the ESX VSphere virtualization software and manage them
using RSM.
Target Audience
VMware VSphere and SAN administrators who are familiar with VMware VSphere
Client, VMware infrastructure client and its storage function, HP StorageWorks
Command View EVA, HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array family, and HP
Replication Solutions Manager (RSM).
Problem statement
The RSM server supports RDM LUN on the ESX 3.5 guest operating system that
contains VMFS3 file system. However, the RSM server does not support VMFS LUNs
on ESX 3.5 guest operating system.
The RSM server enables cost effective diaster recovery. It also facilitate Business
Copy (BC) operations such as instant data restoration on RDM LUN, and data
replication. These HP StorageWorks RSM features are not supported on VMFS LUN
using ESX 3.5. Therefore, managing the VMFS LUN and performing the business
copy operations would require manual effort and thorough understanding of
VSphere. For example, to configure a LUN, users have to configure specific
parameters using the HP StorageWorks Command View EVA software followed by