Technical Report

Best Practices when implementing VMware

vSphere in a Dell EqualLogic PS Series SAN
Environment

Abstract
This Technical Report covers Dell
recommended best practices when configuring a
VMware vSphere environment connected to
Dell EqualLogic PS Series SANs.
















TR1091
V1.1
Copyright 2013 Dell Inc. All Rights Reserved.
EqualLogic is a registered trademark of Dell Inc.
Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc.
All trademarks and registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of
their respective owners.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
Dell Inc. will not be held liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions
contained herein. The information in this document is subject to change.
Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell
is strictly prohibited.

Authored By: Don Williams, Will Urban
[Aug 2013]































WWW.DELL.COM/PSseries


iii
Preface
PS Series arrays optimize resources by automating performance and network load
balancing. Additionally, PS Series arrays offer all-inclusive array management software,
host software, and free firmware updates.
Audience
The information in this guide is intended for VMware and Dell EqualLogic
administrators and installers.
Related Documentation
For detailed information about PS Series arrays, groups, volumes, array software, and
host software, log in to the Documentation page at the customer support site.
Dell Online Services
You can learn about Dell products and services using this procedure:
1. Visit http://www.dell.com or the URL specified in any Dell product information.
2. Use the locale menu or click on the link that specifies your country or region.
Dell EqualLogic Storage Solutions
To learn more about Dell EqualLogic products and new releases being planned, visit
the Dell EqualLogicTechCenter site: http://delltechcenter.com/page/EqualLogic. Here
you can also find articles, demos, online discussions, technical documentation, and
more details about the benefits of our product family.
For an updated Dell EqualLogic compatibility list please visit the following URL:
https://support.equallogic.com/compatibility


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v
Table of Contents
Revision Information ............................................................................................................................ vi
Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................ 1
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 1
Host Based Connectivity and High Availability ........................................................................ 1
Keep ESX updated to current revision .................................................................................. 1
iSCSI Subnets and Routing Recommendations ............................................................... 1
Jumbo Frames ................................................................................................................................. 2
CHAP Authentication for Access Control .......................................................................... 2
EqualLogic Storage Heartbeat VMkernel port ................................................................. 2
Conceptual Image of iSCSI connectivity with Storage Heartbeat ........................ 3
Selecting optimal MPIO mode ................................................................................................. 4
Host Based Performance .................................................................................................................... 9
Disabling Delayed ACK ................................................................................................................ 9
Disabling Large receive offload (LRO) ............................................................................... 11
Storage I/O control ...................................................................................................................... 12
Datastore Size and Queue depth .................................................................................................. 13
Virtual Machine Considerations .................................................................................................... 13
Data Drives ............................................................................................................................................... 13
VMDK on VMFS .............................................................................................................................. 14
iSCSI in the Guest VM ................................................................................................................. 15
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 19
Technical Support and Customer Service .............................................................................. 20


vi
Revision Information
The following table describes the release history of this Technical Report.
Report Date Document Revision
1.0 August 2013 Initial Release
1.1 August 2013 Added best practices around CHAP and ACL
The following table shows the software and firmware used for the preparation of this Technical
Report.
Vendor Model Software Revision
Dell Dell EqualLogic PS Series Firmware 5.x, 6.x
VMware VMware vSphere/ESX 4.1, 5.0, 5.1
The following table lists the documents referred to in this Technical Report. All PS Series
Technical Reports are available on the Customer Support site at: support.dell.com
Vendor Document Title
Dell TR1067 EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager: Installation Considerations and
Datastore Manager
Dell TR1076 Virtual Machine Protection with Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager
v3.5
Dell TR1066 Dell EqualLogic PS Series Arrays: Advanced Storage Features in VMware
vSphere
Dell TR1074 Configuring and Installing the EqualLogic Multipathing Extension
Module for VMware vSphere and PS Series SANs
Dell TR1072 Dell EqualLogic PS Arrays Scalability and Growth in Virtual
Environments
Dell TR1075 Configuring iSCSI Connectivity with VMware vSphere 5 and Dell
EqualLogic PS Series Storage
Dell TR1049 Configuring VMware vSphere Software iSCSI With Dell EqualLogic PS
Series Storage
Dell TR1074 Configuring and Installing the EqualLogic Multipathing Extension
Module for VMware vSphere and PS Series SANs
VMware KB 1009524 Routing iSCSI Not Supported

A multivendor post on using iSCSI with VMware vSphere:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/09/a-multivendor-post-on-


vii
using-iscsi-with-vmware-vsphere.html



1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This technical report is aimed at VMware and Dell EqualLogic PS Series
SAN administrators on recommended best practices when configuring their
virtual environment. This document will cover connectivity and high
availability as well as some common performance tuning best practices. In
addition there is a discussion on various methods to implement for data drive
connectivity for the virtual machines.
INTRODUCTION
As more organizations are virtualizing their datacenter using VMware vSphere
and Dell EqualLogic PS Series SAN, the need for best practices and
configurations will help keep these environments running smoothly. These
best practices and recommendations are a combination of various technical
report guidelines as well as knowledge provided by the technical support staff
at Dell.
Various documents exist that go into extensive detail on how to configure
some of these settings. In these instances, instead of adding the same
information to this document, they will be referenced for further reading.
This document will break each section into recommendations for the various
versions of ESX as each version might have a slightly different setting or
configuration step.
HOST BASED CONNECTIVITY AND HIGH AVAILABILITY
There are several best practices when connecting your VMware ESX servers to
a PS Series SAN that should be implemented not only for performance but for
high availability.
Keep ESX updated to current revision
Customer issues have been resolved by updating to the current ESX version,
also known as the build number of ESX. Selecting an individual ESX sever in the
ESX client GUI will show the version and build number.
iSCSI Subnets and Routing Recommendations
VMware vSphere 4.1, 5.0, and 5.1 do not support routing when using the iSCSI
port binding, which is a required for MPIO with EQL storage also its a best
practice for iSCSI connectivity. Therefore, the VMkernel ports that will be used
to communicate with the PS Series SAN must be on the same subnet and able
to communicate directly with the SAN not via a gateway.
2
Jumbo Frames
Jumbo frames are not required but are recommended for the end to end
switching environment. In order to support Jumbo Frames the ESX VMkernel
ports and vSwitch must be configured to use an MTU of 9000. The physical
switches must also be capable of using Jumbo frames and properly configured
for them.
When using iSCSI Offload cards, verify the compatibility of the cards and their
support for Jumbo Frames before enabling it in the environment.
CHAP Authentication for Access Control
Manipulating MPIO modules and increasing volume sizes are both great ways
to manage volume connections but there are other best practices and
recommendations that can also help control how connections are made to PS
Series volumes. CHAP authentication for access control lists can be very
beneficial. In fact, for larger cluster environments, CHAP is the preferred
method of volume access authentication, from an ease of administration point
of view.
Each PS volume ACL (Access Control List) has a maximum of 16 entries (this is
not related to iSCSI connections) which can be CHAP accounts, IQN strings or
IP addresses. In keeping with designing a scalable, flexible environment, CHAP
allows rapid deployment and discovery of volumes with a single ACL entry. For
example, Cluster A could have a single CHAP entry to talk to all of its volumes
and Cluster B has a different single CHAP entry to talk to all of its volumes.
Shared volumes such as templates or shared data would have both Cluster A
CHAP and Cluster B CHAP assigned to it dramatically decreasing the
administration of ACL lists.
Note: In a VMware environment, this also allows rapid movement of datastores
between clusters. By simply unregistering the VMs, changing the ACL and
rescanning, entire volumes or datastores can be moved between clusters.
Using CHAP can help with scalability as well as ease of management. When a
new host server is introduced to a cluster, the administrator need only set the
CHAP configuration on the iSCSI initiator to enable the new host access to all of
the clusters storage resources. When a new volume is created, only one ACL
entry and an initiator rescan, is all that is needed for all the cluster host servers
to be able access the additional storage capacity.
EqualLogic Storage Heartbeat VMkernel port
In the VMware virtual networking model, certain types of VMkernel network
traffic are sent out on a default VMkernel port for each subnet. Typically this is
the lowest numbered VMkernel port on that subnet. The iSCSI multipathing
network configuration requires that each iSCSI VMkernel ports are bound to a


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single physical NIC as an uplink. As a result, if the physical NIC that is being
used as the uplink for the default VMkernel port goes down, network traffic that
is using the default VMkernel port will fail. This includes vMotion traffic, SSH
access, and ICMP ping replies.

Although existing iSCSI arent directly affected by this condition, a side effect of
the suppressed ping replies is that the EqualLogic PS Series group will not be
able to accurately determine connectivity during the login process, the initiator
will attempt to re-establish the lost sessions. In some scenarios, depending
upon array, server and network load, logins may not be completed in a timely
manner. This will result in not all the paths to the volume being properly
established or even an all paths down (APD) event to occur. To prevent this
from occurring, Dell recommends that a highly available VMkernel port, or
Storage Heartbeat VMkernel port, be created on the iSCSI subnet serving as the
default VMkernel port for such outgoing traffic. Because this Storage Heartbeat
has access to all of the available physical network cards, the ICMP ping replies
will continue to work even if one of the physical network cards has lost
connectivity.


Conceptual Image of iSCSI connectivity with Storage Heartbeat
ESX 5.1
The Storage Heartbeat VMkernel port is no longer required for ESX servers
running version 5.1 and greater.

ESX 5.0
The Storage Heartbeat is recommended for any ESX hosts running version 5.0.
For more information on how to configure connectivity including the Storage
Heartbeat please refer to technical report TR1075 Configuring iSCSI
Connectivity with VMware vSphere 5 and Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage.

ESX 4.x
The Storage Heartbeat is recommended for all ESX hosts running any version of
4.x software. For more information on how to configure connectivity including
the Storage Heartbeat please refer to technical report TR1049 Configuring
VMware vSphere Software iSCSI With Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage.

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Note: If you are using Jumbo Frames, the Storage Heartbeat VMkernel port
must also be configured for Jumbo Frames, otherwise proper negotiation of
Jumbo Frames will likely not occur.
Selecting optimal MPIO mode
Dell Multipath Extension Module (MEM)
The Dell EqualLogic Multipath Extension Module is a software package that can
be installed in VMware environments to provide intelligent load balancing,
multipathing, and failover. If you have a VMware Enterprise or Enterprise+
license, VMware allows you to install vendor specific MPIO software. These
Path Selection Policy (PSP) modules, allow storage vendors to tune MPIO
optimally for their hardware. In environments with the appropriate licensing,
this is the preferred option for best performance and high availability. The MEM
will optimize both datastore IO and Raw Device Mapped (RDM) volumes as well.
In addition to providing intelligent MPIO, the MEM also has setup scripts that
can automate the creation of the iSCSI configuration and connection to the PS
Series SAN.
While the steps may differ between versions, the MEM is supported for VMware
ESX versions 4.1, 5.0, and 5.1
For more information on the Multipath Extension Module and how to install
and configure it, refer to technical report TR1074 Configuring and Installing the
EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module for VMware vSphere and PS Series
SANs.
VMware Round Robin
If MEM is not an option, then it is recommended to set the Path Selection Policy
to VMwares Round Robin. This will enable all of the physical NICs to
participate in load balancing to the datastore. By default VMware will not load
balance I/O across all of the physical NICs but will instead use the additional
paths only in the event of a failure. This is called FIXED. This could potentially
prevent performance scaling past one NIC.
In order for Round Robin to be configured as an option, the iSCSI connectivity
must be properly configured to use more than one physical adapter. In
addition each iSCSI VMkernel port will be bound to only one of these physical
adapters as discussed in the connectivity technical reports. It is possible to
change the path selection policy from FIXED to Round Robin in the VMware
vCenter GUI by managing the path for each datastore. This can become
unwieldy as each datastore has to be manually changed and any new
datastores must also be changed.
In addition to changing the path selection policy to VMwares Round Robin,
there is an additional setting that can be modified to make Round Robin load


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balance better. By default, Round Robin will send 1000 IOs down one path
before switching to the next. This may not fully utilize the entire available
bandwidth to the SAN when multiple paths are available. It is a
recommendation to change this from 1000 IOs per path down to 3 IOs per path
to better load balance across all available adapters. A downside to VMwares
Round Robin is the IOs per path parameter default cant be changed. This
means that new volumes will not inherit the 3 IOs per path setting. As you add
datastores and RDMs you must go to each ESX host, and reset the IOs per path
parameter. Once configured, the settings will persistent across
reboots/startups. To better automate this process there are some scripts
available to use. These can be copied onto the ESX server. As you add new
volumes, including RDM volumes, you must re-run the script to insure that all
the EQL volumes are set.
ESX 5.x
This script will set all EqualLogic volumes to Round Robin and set the IOPs
value to 3. This script can be copied to the console or SSH session to make it
easier. This script must be run on all ESX nodes

esxcli storage nmp satp set --default-psp=VMW_PSP_RR --
satp=VMW_SATP_EQL ; for i in `esxcli storage nmp device list
| grep EQLOGIC|awk '{print $7}'|sed 's/(//g'|sed 's/)//g'` ;
do esxcli storage nmp device set -d $i --psp=VMW_PSP_RR ;
esxcli storage nmp psp roundrobin deviceconfig set -d $i -I
3 -t iops ; done
This next command will set the default so that new EQL volumes will inherit the
proper setting. To be effective this new rule requires a reboot of the ESX host.
Until then if you add more EQL volumes, you will need to re-run the script
above on all ESX nodes.
esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -s "VMW_SATP_EQL" -V
"EQLOGIC" -M "100E-00" -P "VMW_PSP_RR" -O "iops=3"
You can run this command to verify that the correct settings are in effect:
esxcli storage nmp device list
The output should look similar to the following:
naa.6090a098703e5059e3e2e483c401f002
Device Display Name: EQLOGIC iSCSI Disk
(naa.6090a098703e5059e3e2e483c401f002)
Storage Array Type: VMW_SATP_EQL
Storage Array Type Device Config: SATP VMW_SATP_EQL does not
support device configuration.
Path Selection Policy: VMW_PSP_RR
Path Selection Policy Device Config:
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{policy=iops,iops=3,bytes=10485760,useANO=0;lastPathIndex=3:
NumIOsPending=0,numBytesPending=0}
Note the Storage Array Type: VMW_SATP_EQL to indicate the EqualLogic
volume and how the Path Selection Policy is VMW_PSP_RR for Round Robin. In
addition the policy=iops,iops=3 verifies that the number of IOs per path has
been set to 3.
ESX 4.x
In VMware ESX 4 the following commands can be run to set the default policy
for all Dell EqualLogic volumes to Round Robin. This will also automatically set
new EqualLogic volumes to Round Robin. The IOs per path parameter must
still be set on these new datastores when they are added.
To configure the default policy for all EqualLogic volumes to Round Robin type
in the following three commands hitting <ENTER> after each one:
esxcli nmp satp setdefaultpsp -satp VMW_SATP_EQL -psp
VMW_PSP_RR

esxcli corestorage claimrule load

esxcli corestorage claimrule run

In order to change existing datastore volumes to Round Robin the following
script can be run:

for i in `esxcli nmp device list | grep -i -B1 "ay Name:
EQLOGIC" | grep -i "naa." | grep -i -v "ay Name"` ; do
esxcli nmp device setpolicy --device $i --psp VMW_PSP_RR;
done




7

Once existing datastores and all new datastores have been configured for
Round Robin, the following script must be executed to change the IOs per path
to 3:
for i in `esxcli nmp device list | grep -i -B1 "ay Name:
EQLOGIC" | grep -i "naa." | grep -i -v "ay Name"` ; do
esxcli nmp roundrobin setconfig --device $i --iops 3 --type
iops; done

Any new datastores will automatically inherit the Round Robin setting but will
still need the IOs per path script run to change it back down to 3.
To verify the settings type in the following command:

esxcli nmp device list
The output should look similar to the following:

naa.6090a098604ebfe262d9740100000064
Device Display Name: EQLOGIC iSCSI Disk
(naa.6090a098604ebfe262d9740100000064)
Storage Array Type: VMW_SATP_EQL
Storage Array Type Device Config: SATP VMW_SATP_EQL does not
support device configuration.
Path Selection Policy: VMW_PSP_RR
Path Selection Policy Device Config:
{policy=iops,iops=3,bytes=10485760,useANO=0;lastPathIndex=0:
NumIOsPending=0,numBytesPending=0}
Working Paths: vmhba41:C1:T3:L0, vmhba41:C0:T3:L0
Note the Storage Array Type: VMW_SATP_EQL to indicate the EqualLogic
volume and how the Path Selection Policy is VMW_PSP_RR for Round Robin. In
addition the policy=iops,iops=3 verifies that the number of IOs per path has
been set to 3.
Default iSCSI Timeout Values
In addition to configuring Round Robin or MEM for multipathing, there is an
additional recommendation for the host iSCSI timeout settings. This is the
maximum time that the host will wait to receive iSCSI traffic from the PS Series
SAN. In some versions of ESX this timeout might be too low in large
environments which could cause paths to not re-connect or potentially an All
Paths Down (APD) event. By default, the MEM configuration script will make an
attempt to set each of these timeout values to 60 seconds which is the
recommendation.

8
ESX 5.0 and 5.1
The default timeout in ESX 5.1 is 5 seconds. This should be changed to 60
seconds on each host to better allow time for iSCSI traffic to reach the host.
This field is not changeable until the ESX 5.0 server has been updated to patch
ESXi500-201112001 or higher. Once this patch is installed the field for
LoginTimeout will be editable.
1. Log into the vCenter GUI and on the Home screen click on Hosts and
Clusters and select a host.
2. Click on the configuration tab and then Storage Adapters under
Hardware and select the iSCSI Software Adapter and click Properties.
3. Click the Advanced button and scroll down to the section
LoginTimout. Change this value to 60 and hit OK.
This can also be done via command line by typing in the following command:
esxcli iscsi adapter param set --adapter=vmhba --
key=LoginTimeout --value=60
ESX 4.1
The default timeout in ESX 4.1 is 15 seconds. This option is not editable until
applying update 3. Once the field can be modified the LoginTimeout can be
changed to 60 seconds in the Advanced button on the iSCSI Software Adapter
exactly the same way as ESX 5.0 and 5.1.



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HOST BASED PERFORMANCE
Disabling Delayed ACK
Delayed ACK is a TCP/IP method of allowing segment acknowledgements to
piggyback on each other or other data passed over a connection with the goal
of reducing IO overhead.


Example of Delayed ACK from Multivendor Post on using iSCSI with VMware
One side effect of delayed ACK is that if the pipeline isnt filled,
acknowledgement of data will be delayed. In SANHQ this can be seen as
higher latency during lower I/O periods. Latency is measured from the time
the data is sent to when the acknowledgement is received. Since we are talking
about disk I/O any increase in latency can result in poorer performance. As
more customers are moving to 10Gbe and using jumbo frames they may see
this show up more often when monitoring their environment with SANHQ.
This VMware KB 1002598 has information on this as well. This includes
information on how to disable it on ESX 3.5 through 5.x.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=
displayKC&externalId=1002598

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ESX 5.1, 5.0 and 4.1
Log into the vCenter GUI and on the Home screen click on Hosts and Clusters
and select a host.
Click on the configuration tab and then Storage Adapters under Hardware and
select the iSCSI Software Adapter and click Properties.
The next set of steps are similar but depend on if you are setting the property
globally for the iSCSI initiator, setting it for an individual discovery address, or
setting it for a statically assigned target.
Globally
1. Click the Advanced button and scroll down until you see Delayed
ACK
2. Uncheck the checkbox and hit OK
3. Reboot the host
Individual discovery address
1. Click the Dynamic Discovery tab and select the discovery address to
modify and click Settings
2. Click the Advanced button and scroll down until you see Delayed
ACK
3. Uncheck Inherit from parent
4. Uncheck the checkbox for DelayedAck and hit OK
5. Do this for each discover address you wish to modify
6. Reboot the host
Statically assigned target
1. Click the Static Discovery tab and select the static address to modify
and click Settings
2. Click the Advanced button and scroll down until you see Delayed
ACK
3. Uncheck Inherit from parent
4. Uncheck the checkbox for DelayedAck and hit OK
5. Do this for each static address you wish to modify
6. Reboot the host



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Disabling Large receive offload (LRO)
LRO works in a similar way to Delayed ACK, by aggregating packets into a
buffer before the received data is sent to the TCP stack. With iSCSI storage this
inserts latency into the process, potentially reducing performance.
Within VMware, the following command will query the current LRO value.

# esxcfg-advcfg -g /Net/TcpipDefLROEnabled

To set the LRO value to zero (disabled):

# esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Net/TcpipDefLROEnabled

NOTE: a server reboot is required.

Info on changing LRO in the Guest network.

There are numerous resources online that discuss disabling LRO.

VMware has a kb article on disabling LRO to resolve poor performing Linux
Guest OSs:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=
displayKC&externalId=1027511

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Storage I/O control
Storage I/O Control (SIOC) is a means of ensuring that the excessive storage I/O
demands of a particular virtual machine disk (VMDK) do not negatively impact
the storage I/O needs of other VMDKs residing on the same datastore.
Because of the various load balancers in the Dell EqualLogic PS Series SAN, the
Storage I/O Control (SIOC) feature should also be disabled on EQL based data
stores. VMware vCenter might get false information and attempt to load
balance at the same time causing unnecessary data movement. For more
information about SIOC please refer to technical report TR1066 Dell EqualLogic
PS Series Arrays: Advanced Storage Features in VMware vSphere.





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DATASTORE SIZE AND QUEUE DEPTH
Continually administrators are trying to optimize their data layout and
performance and a frequent question that comes up is how big a datastore
should be. While there is no hard set number because every environment is
different, you will find recommendations of 10-30 VMs per datastore. There are
a number of factors to include in this including speed of the disks, RAID type,
and intensity of the VMs.
It is usually recommended to stay in the middle of various recommendations.
Having one VM per volume can pose an administrative headache, while putting
every single VM on a single datastore could cause a performance bottleneck.
Monitor your environment with SANHQ to find volumes that may be
underperforming. In addition, you can monitor the queue depth to see if there
are outstanding I/Os to a volume which might indicate too many VMs are
residing on that datastore.

ESX 5.1 and 5.0
With ESX 5.0 and 5.1, the maximum size supported datastore is 64TB. As of the
time of this writing, the PS Series SAN can create a maximum size volume of
15TB.
ESX 4.1
With ESX 4.1 the maximum volume size is 2TB-512b. If a volume of 2048GB is
created the ESX servers will be unable to find and format it. If you create a 2TB
volume via the EQL GUI, the LUN size will be 2048GB, use 2047GB instead. If
you resize a volume past 2047GB when the capacity is re-read you will no
longer be able to access that Datastore or RDM, until the volume size is
returned to less than 2048GB. Should this happen contact Dell Support, they
can assist you with shrinking the volume while retaining your data.
VIRTUAL MACHINE CONSIDERATIONS
There are a few best practices that can be performed on the virtual machine to
allow them to perform better. One of these is the setting of the disk timeout
values to 60 seconds. For Windows Guests the VMware tools will typically do
this by default. For more information on the disk timeout settings
recommendations, refer to the OS Initiator Guide in the PS Series Firmware
download section of the support site.
DATA DRIVES
There are three primary ways to connect Data Drives to your VMs in your
VMware and EqualLogic environment. This is based off the assumption that
your OS is running its C:\ or /root off of a VMFS datastore volume.
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VMDK on VMFS
iSCSI in the Guest (Sometimes called Direct Connect, or Storage Direct)
Raw Device Mapping (RDM)
VMDK on VMFS
A VMDK disk on a VMFS volume is probably the most commonly used practice
for data drives. This is when you carve out some additional space on a VMFS
datastore and assign it to a virtual machine.
Advantages:
Easy to configure - Easily add more storage to a VM from free space in
existing datastores or provision another datastore.
Viewable in Virtual Center - This keeps the administration overhead light
as you always know where the data drive resides and makes it easier to
integrate vCenter commands such as cloning, templates, and storage
vMotion.
Doesnt require Storage Team interaction - As long as the datastore has
free space you can add data drives to a VM without any storage
interaction.
Allows for tiering of data drives to different VMFS volumes/pools based
on workload - This allows you to have a datastore on a 10k R50 volume
and a database drive residing on a 15k R10 volume
Uses vSphere MPIO to maintain the same performance benefits.
Able to leverage the Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) to
take hypervisor consistent snapshots of the VM and its associated data.
Disadvantages:
No host integration with Auto Snapshot Manager/Microsoft or Linux
Edition - Dell provides a suite of tools including a VSS application
consistent snapshot tool for NTFS volumes, SQL, Sharepoint, and
Exchange. However this tool cannot be leveraged on drives that are
VMDK on VMFS volumes.
VMDK on VMFS Best Practices
When configuring a VMDK on VMFS, there are a few best practices to maintain
performance.
1. Click on the virtual machine you want to add the data drive too
2. Click Edit Virtual Machine Settings.
3. Under hardware choose Add -> Hard Disk and click Next.
4. Choose to create a new virtual disk and click Next.
5. Choose the size that you want the VM to see, the disk provisioning
options you want and here is where you can choose to keep it on the
same VMFS datastore as the VM or browse for another one.


15
6. On the next screen this is an important step that is often overlooked. We
want to change the virtual SCSI adapter to be a different one than what
the base OS drive is residing on. Dells support staff has seen tremendous
performance improvements by just making these few changes. Change
the Virtual Device Node to 1:0 or 2,3 for each additional device past the
OS drive sitting on 0:0.

This will also add a new SCSI Controller to the virtual machine. For VMs that are
supported you should change it from LSI to Paravirtual SCSI Adapter for better
performance.


Note: Virtualized RDMs and VMDKs are still limited to 2TB-512b in size in all
versions of ESX.
iSCSI in the Guest VM
Because iSCSI traffic is just standard network traffic, you can take advantage of
iSCSI in the guest VM by using the guest VMs iSCSI software initiator. This also
allows vMotion and all of the other tools to work because to the VM, its just
network traffic.
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Advantages:
Overcome 2TB Limits of VMFS/RDM in vSphere 4.1 - If you are using large
file systems and still on vSphere 4.1 this ability allows your VMs to talk to
a volume much larger than a 2TB volume or avoid using extents.
Utilize host integration software such as Auto Snapshot
Manger/Microsoft Edition and off host backup - By using iSCSI in the
guest VM with iSCSI software initiator attached volumes, you can take
advantage of the data protection snapshot tools provided by Dell. This
also gives you the benefit of taking advantage of transportable snapshot
technologies with backup vendors to offload snapshots to a backup
server to eliminate LAN traffic and backup window contention.
Isolates the data drives for Data Protection/DR strategies - This technique
also allows you to isolate your data drives to a volume that may have
different replication and snapshot strategies than the volume that houses
the parent VM.
Can be mounted on physical or other virtual machines - If you have a
VM crash or just want to dismount and remount the data you can easily
do this through the iSCSI initiator.
Uses same best practices from physical environments - This technique is
exactly the same as from the physical environment. If you P2V a server
that has iSCSI attached volumes, you can continue to run the VM with
very little change to the server.
Allows for tiering of data drives to different volumes/pools based on
workload - Since the data drives reside on a volume, you can have faster
performing or larger data size data residing on the SAN tier that they
require which may be different than the VMs.
Disadvantages:
Isnt visible to Virtual Center - Because the volume is managed from the
VM itself, vCenter will not see it in the storage tab and you wont see it
connected to the VM when editing the properties. This can cause some
additional management overhead.
Requires Storage Team intervention - Since you are creating a brand
new volume, you need to create the volume to be seen by the VM not
the ESX environment. This means installing and configuring the iSCSI
software initiator, connecting to the SAN with proper pathing and
configuring and formatting the volume to be seen by the VM.
Needs to be considered for DR Plans separate from VMs - Because the
volume isnt seen by vCenter or any of the VMware tools like Site
Recovery Manager, you need to have different considerations for the
protection of these volumes. They need to be put into the recovery and
protection plans according to their SLAs.



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iSCSI in the Guest VM Best Practices
Configuring iSCSI in the guest is exactly the same as configuring it for a physical
server. Install the iSCSI initiator into the guest VM, connect to the SAN and
format the presented volume. There are, however, some considerations to
think about on the ESX servers.
1. Normally the iSCSI network and Public LAN network are isolated so you
first have to make sure that the VM can see the PS Series SAN.
2. Verify the VM is configured properly to take advantage of MPIO inside
the guest VM if you need it.
3. Modify the vSwitch that is delivering iSCSI traffic to include two iSCSI
Guest Port Groups.
4. In the diagram below these are iSCSI Guest 1 and iSCSI Guest 2. These
are installed on the vSwitch that can communicate on the SAN network.

5. Once those are created, the next thing to do is to guarantee traffic across
the physical NICs. If you monitor esxtop even if you give a VM two virtual
NICs, ESX doesnt guarantee the traffic across all the physical NICs from a
single VM so we have to force it to do that. But you dont want to
explicitly set it so that you lose failover ability so we just take advantage
of the vSwitch NIC Teaming.
6. So inside the vSwitch, select the first iSCSI Guest and click properties.
7. Click the NIC Teaming tab and put a check box in Override vSwitch
Failover order.
8. Make one of the physical NICs active and the other standby (not unused).
Do this for the other iSCSI Guest and use the other adapter.
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9. The last thing to do is then assign new Ethernet adapters to the VM and
choose the iSCSI Guest networks as one of the networks you just
created.

Raw Device Mapped LUNs
Raw Device Mapped LUNs (RDMs) are used when you want to isolate the data
onto volumes but still retain its view inside vCenter.
Advantages:
Easy to configure - Each RDM is a single volume on the SAN.
Viewable in Virtual Center under the VMs it is attached to - The volume
will show up inside vCenter under the VM and allows for vCenter
integration with software such as SRM.
Allows for tiering of data drives to different volumes or pools based on
workload - You can isolate the data drive RDMs to another tier of storage
for performance.
Uses vSphere MPIO for high bandwidth Apps - Continues to leverage the
MEM or Round Robin for multipathing.
Isolates data from OS and enable the use of 3rd party applications which
work with RDMs - There are some 3rd party applications that require
some form of RDM for either backup or protection or tools.
Disadvantages:
No guest integration with Auto Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition -
ASM/ME cannot recognize RDM volumes for smart copy operations.
No VM integration with Dell EqualLogic Virtual Storage Manager
Smartcopies - VSM doesnt recognize RDM volumes for smart copy
operations for VM snapshots.
Each ESX server needs connectivity so connection counts need to be
evaluated - Since each ESX server needs to see the RDM volume you will


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have multiple connections to the RDM even though only one server is
using the volume at a time.
When configuring RDMs, follow the same best practices as VMDK on VMFS with
the new SCSI adapter and paravirtualized adapter if supported.
VM Data Drive Formatting Options
Dell has found improvements in performance by using a 64k partition
alignment. This will be necessary in Windows Operating Systems before
Windows 2008, Solaris, and Linux guest OSs. Additionally, SQL, Exchange, and
other IO intensive applications will benefit from formatting the filesystem with a
64K cluster size. This better aligns IOs with the 64K stripe size of the EQL
arrays.

CONCLUSION
As more environments become virtualized, it is necessary to follow best
practices to maintain not only the performance of these environments, but also
the high availability. Dell recommends these practices be followed even if there
is no apparent performance issue as it allows the environment to be in a known
healthy state.
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Technical Support and Customer Service
Dell support service is available to answer your questions about PS Series SAN arrays.
Contacting Dell
1. If you have an Express Service Code, have it ready.
The code helps the Dell automated support telephone system direct your call
more efficiently.
2. If you are a customer in the United States or Canada in need of technical
support,
call 1-800-945-3355. If not, go to Step 3.
3. Visit support.dell.com/equallogic.
4. Log in, or click Create Account to request a new support account.
5. At the top right, click Contact Us, and call the phone number or select the link
for the type
of support you need.
Warranty Information
The MODEL array warranty is included in the shipping box. For information about
registering a warranty, visit http://support.dell.com/EqualLogic.