HP 3PAR VMware ESX Implementation Guide
Table Of Contents
- HP 3PAR VMware ESX Implementation Guide
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Configuring the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage for Fibre Channel
- 3 Configuring the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage for iSCSI
- 4 Configuring the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage for FCoE
- 5 Configuring the Host for a Fibre Channel Connection
- Installing the HBA and Drivers
- Installing Virtual Machine Guest Operating System
- Multipath Failover Considerations and I/O Load Balancing
- Performance Considerations for Multiple Host Configurations
- ESX/ESXi 4.1, ESXi 5.x Additional Feature Considerations
- Storage I/O Control
- vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)
- HP 3PAR VAAI Plugin 1.1.1 for ESX 4.1
- HP 3PAR VAAI Plugin 2.2.0 for ESXi 5.x
- UNMAP (Space Reclaim) Storage Hardware Support for ESXi 5.x
- Out-of-Space Condition for ESX 4.1 and ESXi 5.x
- Additional New Primitives Support on ESXi 5.x
- VAAI and New Feature Support Table
- VAAI Plugin Verification
- 6 Configuring the Host as an FCoE Initiator Connecting to a FC target or an FCoE Target
- 7 Configuring the Host for an iSCSI Connection
- Setting Up the Switch, iSCSI Initiator, and iSCSI target ports
- Installing iSCSI on VMware ESX
- Installing Virtual Machine Guest Operating System
- Creating a VMkernel Port
- Configuring a Service Console Connection for the iSCSI Storage
- Configuring the VMware SW iSCSI Initiator
- iSCSI Failover Considerations and Multipath Load Balancing
- Performance Considerations for Multiple Host Configurations
- ESX/ESXi Additional Feature Considerations
- 8 Allocating Storage for Access by the ESX Host
- 9 Booting the VMware ESX Host from the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage
- 10 Support and Other Resources
- 11 Documentation feedback
- A Appendix
Figure 29 iSCSI Software Initiator Configuration
NOTE: When multiple teamed NICs are configured, all HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage iSCSI ports
and ESX iSCSI NICs must be in the same VLAN of the IP switch.
NOTE: NIC teaming is not supported in ESXi 5.x
Installing Virtual Machine Guest Operating System
The VMware ESX documentation lists recommended virtual machine guest operating systems (GOS)
and their installation and setup as virtual machines. Refer to the VMware ESX documentation for
information on setting up your virtual machine configuration available at VMware.
CAUTION: In VMware KB 51306, VMware identifies a problem with RHEL 5 (GA), RHEL 4 U4,
RHEL 4 U3, SLES 10 (GA), and SLES 9 SP3 guest operating systems. Their file systems may become
read-only in the event of busy I/O retry or path failover of the ESX host’s SAN or iSCSI storage.
KB 51306 is available on the VMware Knowledge Base website:
VMware
Because of this known issue, HP does not recommend, and does not support the usage of
RHEL 5 (GA), RHEL 4 U4, RHEL 4 U3, SLES 10 (GA), and SLES 9 SP3 as guest operating systems
for virtual machines on VMware ESX hosts attached to HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems.
Installing Virtual Machine Guest Operating System 65