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Table Of Contents

1 Introduction
- 1.1 Audience
- 1.2 Prerequisites
2 Fibre Channel switch zoning
- 2.1 Single initiator multiple target zoning
- 2.2 WWN zoning
- 2.3 Port zoning
- 2.4 Virtual ports
3 Host initiator settings
4 Modifying queue depth and timeouts
- 4.1 Host bus adapter queue depth
- 4.2 Storage driver queue depth and timeouts
- 4.3 Adjusting settings for permanent device loss conditions
- 4.4 Modifying the VMFS queue depth for virtual machines (DSNRO)
- 4.5 Adaptive queue depth
- 4.6 Modifying the guest operating system queue depth
  - 4.6.1 Windows Server
- 4.7 Setting operating system disk timeouts
  - 4.7.1 Windows
  - 4.7.2 Linux
5 Guest virtual SCSI adapter selection
- 5.1 BusLogic Parallel
- 5.2 LSI Logic Parallel
- 5.3 LSI Logic SAS
- 5.4 VMware Paravirtual
6 Mapping volumes to an ESXi server
- 6.1 Basic volume mapping concepts
- 6.2 Basic SC Series volume mappings
- 6.3 Multipathed volume concepts
- 6.4 Multipathed SC Series volumes
- 6.5 Configuring the VMware iSCSI software initiator for a single path
- 6.6 Configuring the VMware iSCSI software initiator for multipathing
  - 6.6.1 VMkernel port binding considerations with software iSCSI
- 6.7 iSCSI port multi-VLAN configuration recommendations
- 6.8 Configuring the FCoE software initiator for multipathing
- 6.9 VMware multipathing policies
- 6.10 Multipathing using a fixed path selection policy
- 6.11 Multipathing using a round robin path selection policy
- 6.12 Asymmetric logical unit access (ALUA) for front-end SAS
- 6.13 Unmapping volumes from an ESXi host
- 6.14 Mapping volumes from multiple arrays
- 6.15 Multipathing resources
7 Boot from SAN
- 7.1 Configuring boot from SAN
8 Volume creation and sizing
- 8.1 Volume sizing and the 64 TB limit
- 8.2 Virtual machines per datastore
- 8.3 VMFS partition alignment
- 8.4 VMFS file systems and block sizes
9 Volume mapping layout
- 9.1 Multiple virtual machines per volume
- 9.2 One virtual machine per volume
10 Raw device mapping (RDM)
11 Data Progression and storage profile selection
- 11.1 On-Demand Data Progression
- 11.2 Data reduction (compression and deduplication)
  - 11.2.1 Data Reduction Input
12 Thin provisioning and virtual disks
- 12.1 Virtual disk formats
- 12.2 Thin provisioning relationship
- 12.3 SC Series thin write functionality
- 12.4 SC Series thin provisioning or VMware thin provisioning
- 12.5 Windows free space recovery
- 12.6 Affinity Manager 2.0
13 Extending VMware volumes
- 13.1 Increasing the size of VMFS datastores
  - 13.1.1 Expanding an extent in an existing VMFS datastore
  - 13.1.2 Adding a new extent to an existing datastore
- 13.2 Increasing the size of a virtual machine disk (VMDK) file
- 13.3 Increasing the size of a raw device mapping (RDM)
14 Snapshots (replays) and virtual machine backups
- 14.1 Backing up virtual machines
  - 14.1.1 Backing up virtual machines to tape or disk
  - 14.1.2 Backing up virtual machines using snapshots
- 14.2 Recovering virtual machine data from a snapshot
15 Replication and remote recovery
- 15.1 Synchronous replication
- 15.2 Asynchronous replication
- 15.3 Replication considerations with standard replications
- 15.4 Replication considerations with Live Volumes
- 15.5 Replication tips and tricks
- 15.6 Virtual machine recovery at a DR site
16 VMware storage features
- 16.1 Storage I/O Controls (SIOC)
  - 16.1.1 SIOC and volume QoS
- 16.2 Storage distributed resource scheduler (SDRS)
- 16.3 vStorage APIs for array integration (VAAI)
- 16.4 vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)
- 16.5 Virtual Volumes (vVols)
A Determining the appropriate queue depth for an ESXi host
- A.1 Fibre Channel
- A.2 iSCSI
- A.3 Using esxtop to monitor queue depth
B Deploying vSphere client plug-ins
- B.1 Dell Storage vSphere Web Client plug-in
C Configuring Dell Storage Manager VMware integrations
D Host and cluster settings
- D.1 Recommended settings
- D.2 Optional settings
E Additional resources
- E.1 Technical support and resources
- E.2 VMware support

Mapping volumes to an ESXi server

35 Dell EMC SC Series: Best Practices with VMware vSphere | 2060-M-BP-V

3. Once the datastore has been successfully unmounted, select Detach on the disk device.

Detaching a storage device

4. Repeat step 1 through step 3 for each host the volume is presented.

5. Within the DSM Client, unmap the volume.

6. Within the vSphere client, rescan the adapters to ensure that the disk has been removed.

Note: Graceful removal of volumes from an ESXi host is done automatically when using the Dell SC Series

vSphere client plug-in. More information about how to obtain the plug-in is in appendix B.

6.14 Mapping volumes from multiple arrays

When mapping volumes from separate arrays to the same ESXi cluster, attention should be paid to the LUN

when mapping volumes from each system. For administrative simplicity, it is recommended to use separate

numbering schemes when mapping volumes from each of the arrays. For example, array A might map

volumes using LUNs 1 through 50, while array B might use LUNs 51 through100. A numbering scheme helps

avoid conflicts if a volume is ever promoted to a Live Volume between the two arrays in the future.

6.15 Multipathing resources

For more information about multipathing, see the section, “Understanding Multipathing and Failover” in the

vSphere Storage Guide at VMware vSphere documentation.