Equalogic Management: iSCSI Connector via a VM Port Group

Deathmage

Hey guys,

So I'm wanting to make a VM have access to our Equalogic SAN. However if any of you know Dell Recommends only using the eth0-4 on the controllers.

So with that being said instead of normally just doing a VMkernel port (for iSCSI traffic from the ESXi host to the SAN only) I'm adding a VM Port Group to the iSCSI vSwitch so I can map the iSCSI vSwitch to a Nic on a VM so I can 'access' the SAN from SAN HQ from within the VM from a web broswer.

Would this work correctly?

joelsfood

It should work fine, as you're tagging the vm port group with same VLAN, just give the VM an IP on that VLAN, and bob's your uncle

Deathmage

joelsfood wrote: »

It should work fine, as you're tagging the vm port group with same VLAN, just give the VM an IP on that VLAN, and bob's your uncle

Yup, it did work correctly.

jibbajabba

One thing which was always a bit crap with them .. Thankfully when I was working a lot with them I was just able to change VLANs on the switch myself so during the initial configuration I just changed the VLAN to whatever my workstation was in, gave the EQL its "proper" IPs, logged in, configured management and storage network, and changed the VLAN back to its "supposed to be" one ..

At some point I just had a native vlan on those ports for configturation purposes and just added additional IPs to my workstation ..

Deathmage

Well tonight I had an interesting error occur twice on a VM I was moving from one the local datastore to the array datastore.

The error was: "incompatible device backing specified for device '11'"

The VM in question was once a VM on VM Workstation on the company application server and it was extremely tax'd because of it, so I move the VM and powered it up on the R720xd but I never actually checked the settings 2 months ago, it's also VM Version 7 but that shouldn't matter much just won't be supported in the web client (which I dislike a ton, web-based is slow and choppy). I guess in the Hardware section of settings, the CD/DVD drive was 'unsupported' so I think it copied over setting for VM workstation that the datastore conversion didn't like, it would get to 99% done and then fail with the above error.

Attempting the datastore conversion now, hopefully it will work with the CD/DVD device removed and no other 'unsupported' hardware devices attached. the iSCSI is set to LSI Logic SAS so it 'should' be fine.

Deathmage

P2V went fine after the CD/DVD drive was removed. I learned something new last night.

Was in the office until 2 am this morning, boy was that a long day since 5 am yesterday but all I got left ot P2V is the SQL server.

Essendon

How big's the SQL server Trev? Sometimes with SQL servers, you are better off standing up a VM in parallel with the physical and running a sync and then a final sync. Replication/Mirroring etc might just be the better way to go about P2V'ing an SQL machine. Does the SQL server also run the apps or do the apps run on other servers? An SQL server can be a different kettle of fish with P2V's.. ENSURE you have a reliable, full, latest backup before you begin.