WHITE PAPER USING IOMEGA STORCENTER PRO ix4-200r NAS SERVER WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY VMware® ESX Server is virtual infrastructure software for consolidating and managing systems. ESX Server accelerates service deployments and adds management flexibility by partitioning x86 servers into a pool of secure, portable and hardware-independent virtual machines.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 AUDIENCE Information contained in this white paper is intended for Iomega customers, partners, and service personnel involved in planning, architecting, or administering a VMware environment with an Iomega StorCenter NAS as the storage device. The readers are expected to have experience with ESX Server and an Iomega StorCenter NAS devices that run EMC Lifeline software.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 SOFTWARE Table 2 lists the software resources used in the testing environment. Software EMC Lifeline 2.0 Quantity one VMware ESX Server 3.5 one VMware Virtual Infrastructure 2.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 w Creating VMFS datastores in the ESX Server – for iSCSI, configuring VMFS datastores over the iSCSI LUNs that were provisioned from a StorCenter ix4-200r. w Adding RDM disks to virtual machines – for iSCSI, alternatively making the LUNs available as RDM disks to the virtual machines. w Multipathing and failover in the ESX Server – best practices for designing highly available network architecture in the ESX Server.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 2. Select the VMkernel connection type as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3 VMkernel selection 3.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 4. Name the new VMkernel port group and optionally the VLAN ID for the network. Figure 5 Name the VMkernel port group 5. Verify the settings and finish creating the VMkernel port.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 ADDING A SHARE ON AN IOMEGA STORCENTER NAS DEVICE When using NFS storage, you need to add a share on a StorCenter ix4-200r. Appropriate access permissions must be set for the VMkernel port on the ESX Server to mount an NFS share. These access permissions are: w Host access – provide the VMkernel port mount access to the share. w Read/write access – provide the VMkernel port read/write access to the share.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 2. Go to Shared Storage and click Add to create a new share and optionally enable security on it. Figure 8 Create a new share When creating the share, ensure Folder is the shared storage type and that Enable security is not checked. 3. Click Next to specify user access to the secured share.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 4. Click Next to specify host access to the secured share. Make sure you enter the IP address of the VMKernel port created previously, not the service console port. Figure 10 Specify host access 5. Click Apply and a confirmation page should display.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 CREATING AN NFS DATASTORE ON ESX SERVER VMware Infrastructure 3 management utilities are used to configure and mount NFS shares from the StorCenter ix4200r. The VI client is also used to assign a datastore name to the export. The datastore name is the key reference that is used to manage the datastore within the ESX environment. The NFS datastore is viewed as a pool of storage space to support virtual disks.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 The TCP/IP heap is memory used for TCP/IP buffers for NFS, iSCSI, VMotion, etc. The default NFS.SendBufferSize is 264KB, and the default NFS.ReceiveBufferSize is 128KB. So with two sockets per volume, the total heap needed per volume is 784KB. If you want to create a total of 32 NFS datastores, then you need approximately 25MB in heap size.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 1. Go to Configuration > Storage > Add Storage… Figure 14 Add storage to ESX Server 2. Select the Network File System option.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 3. Enter the NFS server and share information on StorCenter ix4-200r. Figure 16 Mount the NFS share Either the hostname or the IP address of the StorCenter ix4-200r can be entered here. Ensure that “/nfs” is specified in the folder path so Lifeline can export an NFS share. A meaningful datastore name is recommended to clearly identify it in ESX Server. 4. Click Next and confirm the settings to create the datastore.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 ADDING AN ISCSI LUN ON AN IOMEGA STORCENTER NAS DEVICE When using iSCSI storage, you need to add an iSCSI LUN on a StorCenter ix4-200r. A total of 32 iSCSI targets can be created on an StorCenter ix4-200r, with each target holding one single LUN. An iSCSI LUN can be protected by setting user access controls and iSCSI authentication methods.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 2. Click Shared Storage and click Add to create a new iSCSI LUN and enable security on it. Figure 19 Add new LUN 3. Proceed to set user access to the LUN.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 In this example, the user account Administrator is given read/write access to the LUN, but other users have no access to it. This Administrator user account and its password will be the CHAP logon credentials to be used by ESX Server. 4. Click Apply and a confirmation page should display.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 1. Enable the iSCSI client in the VMware ESX firewall. Go to Configuration > Security Profile > Properties… Figure 22 Enable iSCSI client 2.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 3. Click the vmnba32 iSCSI software adapter and then click Properties. If the iSCSI initiator is not enabled yet, click Configure to enable the initiator and use the default iSCSI name. Figure 24 iSCSI initiator properties 4. Click Dynamic Discovery > Add to enter the iSCSI server information. As mentioned previously, the SendTargets discovery method is used.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 5. Click CHAP Authentication > Configure to enter the CHAP authentication credentials for logon to the iSCSI targets on the StorCenter ix4-200r. The CHAP name should be the user name that is granted read/write access to an iSCSI LUN. In this example, it’s Administrator. The CHAP secret is the password of the user account as set on the ix4-200r. A CHAP secret is required to have 12-16 characters if IPSec is not used.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 All the targets and LUNs that are either unsecured or granted access to the Administrator user will show up as disks in the VMware ESX. 7. Go to Configuration > Storage > Add Storage… again to create VMFS datastore. 8. Select the Disk/LUN option. Figure 28 Select VMFS type 9. Select the iSCSI LUN to create VMFS on.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 10. Review the current disk layout on the disk and proceed Figure 30 Review disk layout 11. Name the VMFS datastore to be created.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 12. Specify the maximum file size allowed on the datastore and the maximum capacity on the datastore Figure 32 Specify file size and capacity 13. Review the summary and proceed to create the VMFS datastore.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 ADDING AN RDM DISK TO VIRTUAL MACHINE A raw device mapping (RDM) is a special file in a VMFS volume that acts as a proxy for a raw device. The RDM provides some of the advantages of a virtual disk in the VMFS file system, while keeping some advantages of direct access to raw devices. VMware recommends RDM when a virtual machine must interact with a real disk on the SAN or iSCSI SAN. Two compatibility modes are available for RDM.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 4. Go to Summary > Edit Settings with the virtual machine powered on or powered off. When in the Virtual Machine Properties window, click Add to add a new hardware to the virtual machine. Figure 35 Edit virtual machine settings 5. Select Hard Disk as the hardware to add.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 6. Choose Raw Device Mappings as the virtual disk type. Figure 37 Select RDM as the disk type 7. Select the iSCSI LUN on the Storcenter ix4-200r to be used as an RDM disk.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 8. Choose which datastore to map to the RDM. The default is to store the RDM with the virtual machine in the same datastore. Figure 39 Decide where to map the RDM 9. Select which RDM compatibility mode to use.
STORCENTER IX4-200r NAS WITH VMWARE ESX SERVER 3.5 10. Choose the default virtual device/SCSI node and have the RDM disk added into the virtual machine. 11. After the RDM disk is added from ESX Server, the virtual machine needs to rescan its SCSI bus to discover the new disk. Afterwards, partitions can be created and formatted with a file system type. For a Windows guest, use the Disk Manager utility; for a Linux guest, use the fdisk utility and file system formatting tools such as mkreiserfs.
