Setup Guide

For further information on using these two vSphere Client plug-ins, refer to the VSI Unified Storage Management Product

Guide and the VSI Storage Viewer Product Guide.

Disk Formatting

When creating volumes in PowerStore for a vSphere ESXi host, the following considerations should be made:

● Disk logical block size - The only logical block (LB) size supported by vSphere ESXi for presenting volumes is 512 bytes.

NOTE: For details on formatting a newly created volume, refer to the PowerStore Configuring Volumes guide that

matches the version running on your PowerStore cluster.

● Disk alignment - Unaligned disk partitions may substantially impact I/O to the disk.

With vSphere ESXi, datastores and virtual disks are aligned by default as they are created. Therefore, no further action is

required to align these in ESXi.

With virtual machine disk partitions within the virtual disk, alignment is determined by the guest OS. For virtual machines

that are not aligned, consider using tools such as UBERAlign to realign the disk partitions as required.

Presenting PowerStore Volumes to the ESXi Host

Specify ESXi as the operating system when presenting PowerStore volumes to the ESXi host.

NOTE: Using data reduction and /or encryption software on the host side will affect the PowerStore cluster data

reduction.

NOTE: When using iSCSI software initiator with ESXi and PowerStore storage, it is recommended to use only lower case

characters in the IQN to correctly present the PowerStore volumes to ESXi. For more details, refer to VMware KB article

2017582 on the VMware website (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?

language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2017582).

When adding host groups and hosts to allow ESXi hosts to access PowerStore volumes, specify ESXi as the operating system

for newly-created hosts.

Creating a File System

It is recommended to create the file system using its default block size.

NOTE: File system configuration and management is out of the scope of this document.

It is recommended to create the file system using its default block size (using a non-default block size may lead to unexpected

behavior). Refer to your operating system and file system documentation.

VMware Paravirtual SCSI Controllers

Configure virtual machines with paravirtual SCSI controllers to achieve higher throughput and lower CPU usage.

For optimal resource utilization of virtual machines with PowerStore, it is recommended to configure virtual machines with

paravirtualized SCSI controllers. VMware paravirtual SCSI controllers are high performance storage controllers that can provide

higher throughput and lower CPU usage. These controllers are best suited for high performance storage environments.

For further details on configuring virtual machines with paravirtualized SCSI controllers, refer to the vSphere Virtual Machine

Administration Guide in the VMware vSphere documentation.

Virtual Disk Provisioning

Follow these recommendations for provisioning virtual disks on the PowerStore cluster.

For optimal space utilization with vSphere ESXi 6.x and above, it is recommended to provision virtual disks on the PowerStore

cluster, using Thin Provisioning.

Host Configuration for VMware vSphere ESXi