11.0 HP StoreVirtual Storage VSA Installation and Configuration Guide (TA688-96141, September 2013)

• Virtual network environment with 1 GbE connectivity or higher, including the following:
A host name for the StoreVirtual VSA◦
◦ A network configuration plan, including reserved IP addresses, subnet mask, and gateway
for the StoreVirtual VSA. If you use DHCP, be sure to reserve statically assigned IP
addresses for all storage systems on the DHCP server. Reserved IP addresses are required.
• The minimum configuration for high availability with automatic failover consists of two or more
StoreVirtual VSAs on separate physical servers with Network RAID-10 and a Failover Manager.
A manual failover configuration can be achieved with two or more StoreVirtual VSAs on
separate physical servers and clustered with a Virtual Manager.
See “Configuration requirements for the VSA for vSphere” (page 11) for configuration requirements
specific to the VSA for vSphere.
See “Configuration requirements for the VSA for Hyper-V” (page 17) for configuration requirements
specific to the VSA for Hyper-V.
Best practices
Other configuration recommendations are useful to improve the reliability and performance of your
virtual storage pool. Consider implementing as many of these best practices as possible in your
virtual storage pool environment.
Each StoreVirtual VSA should meet the following conditions, if possible.
• Have a virtual switch or virtual network comprised of dual Gigabit Ethernet or more. Providing
network redundancy and greater bandwidth improves both performance and reliability.
• Use redundant RAID for the underlying storage of a StoreVirtual VSA in each server to prevent
single disk failures from causing StoreVirtual VSA system failure. Do not use RAID 0.
NOTE: See the HP StoreVirtual Storage User Guide for detailed information about using
RAID for individual storage system data protection.
See “Best practices for VSA for vSphere” (page 12) for best practices specific to the VSA for
vSphere.
See “Best practices for VSA for Hyper-V” (page 18) for best practices specific to the VSA for
Hyper-V.
Unsupported configurations
• The StoreVirtual VSA does not support bonding virtual network interfaces.
NOTE: Only the VSA for vSphere is configured with two network interfaces. The VSA for
Hyper-V is configured with one network interface.
• The virtual NICs on the StoreVirtual VSA do not support flow control setting modifications or
TCP off-load. The physical NICs on the host server can be configured with these features. (NIC
bonding is a best practice in the host server.)
• The hot removal of virtual hard disks is not supported. See the Microsoft Linux Integration
Services User Guide.
See “Unsupported configurations for VSA for vSphere” (page 12) for unsupported configurations
specific to the VSA for vSphere.
See “Unsupported configurations for VSA for Hyper-V” (page 18) for unsupported configurations
specific to the VSA for Hyper-V.
6 Planning for the HP StoreVirtual VSA