VMware Solutions Discussions

VMWare clustered storage with FC and iSCSI

JOHNNYBOZO
3,019 Views

Hello friends,

We're  looking at buying a couple of FAS2040s to replace some aging FAS250s we have. At the same time we're going to move start virtualising our environment.

Currently we're planning on connecting two vSphere 5 hosts to the primary FAS2040 directly via fibre channel so as to provide a HA environment for the guests. If I want to add a third host to the cluster, am I able to do so via iSCSI (rather than installing a fibre channel fabric) so that all three hosts can share the same datastore?  I've read through the various vmware/netapp documentation, but the answer isn't clear.

Cheers

3 REPLIES 3

arunchak
3,019 Views

Hi,

You can map the LUN to multiple iGropus. Have one iGroup with iSCSI and other with FC. Try this out.

Thanks,

  Arun

sizemore
3,019 Views

Yes you could do that, but i wouldn't. Is there a requirement for FC?  With vSphere 5.0 I would use NFS as the primary protocol for all VM's, and iSCSI for in guest block storage.

~Glenn

keitha
3,019 Views

This is definitely a bit odd. From a NetApp standpoint we can share the LUN out both over FC and ISCSI with no problems however I don't believe VMware supports this. In fact I don't think VMware is a fan of FC direct connect either. If you don't have a FC Fabric I would strongly suggest you leverage a pure IP solution and use NFS or ISCSI, The performance at scale of all 3 protocols is nearly the same and certainly on a deployment with a 2040 the protocol is not going to be a limiting factor in performance. You simply would not have enough spindles or VMs to saturate the links. I think you would be better off with a more common and easily supportable configuration of NFS or ISCSI.

Keith

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