Dell Equallogic, this has been asked many times. Is there any hope of getting READ ONLY for a specific iSCSI initiator. This will make your customers happy 🙂
http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=2938
Filed under: equallogic | Tagged: Dell Equallogic, iSCSI initiator | Leave a comment »
So I was complaining to a group of fellow nerds about how much a pain in the butt it is to ‘properly’ remove a LUN from ESX… you know so that you don’t cause an APD incident (you know, accidentally freeze up all of your virtual machines…)
So the proper procedure is painful (less painful though than it used to be with 4.1 ESX though) http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2004605
So then of course vmPete chimes in with I just use the EqualLogic HIT kit Virtual edition http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/w/wiki/2689.equallogic-hit-ve-new-features.aspx
Duh! I had been so busy getting ESX5.1 i setup and the new vcenter that I forgot all about it! Well let me tell you, it is a lifesaver! With just a couple of clicks I can create a volume, and with a couple of clicks I can delete a volume! Do you know how much time and pain that saves! So now I’m having fun recreating my volume with vmfs5.
Filed under: equallogic, ESXi 5.1, vmware | Tagged: esx, technology | Leave a comment »
The two PS6000’s are in a group with capacity of 9.41 TB, 3.58 was reserved for volumes
Had to pull out a drive, took about five hours to rebuild.
Filed under: equallogic | Leave a comment »
has drives with mismatched RPM which may prevent all drives from performing at rated specifications. Mismatched drives should be replaced with matching RPM specifications
After support reviewed the logs they said a drive failure was eminent, so replaced the drive.
Filed under: equallogic | Tagged: drive failure | Leave a comment »
Well, previously https://michaelellerbeck.com/2009/11/30/so-you-bought-an-equallogic-san-now-what-part-two/
I would use the venerable rinetd to handle portforwarding on windows. But alas, along comes server 2008 R2 and it doesn’t working anymore (actually I never tested, it might work)
But, Server 2008 R2 has built in functionality for port forwarding (nifty!)
http://www.rickwargo.com/2011/01/08/port-forwarding-port-mapping-on-windows-server-2008-r2/
So I just gave it a
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=25 listenaddress=10.10.50.51 connectport=25 connectaddress=192.168.1.1
Now I point the equallogic to 10.10.50.51 (an address reachable on the san network) (It requires two nics on the ‘bridge’ server of course one on each network)
And now I can get the email alerts out! Nifty
Filed under: equallogic | Tagged: equallogic | Leave a comment »
So I wish there was one consolidated doc of settings to change for ESXi 5.1 and EqualLogic. Anyone out there have more settings please let me know!!
To start from here http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/f/4466/t/19459676.aspx
1.) Delayed ACK DISABLED
2.) Large Receive Offload DISABLED
3.) Make sure they are using either VMware Round Robin (with IOs per path changed to 3), or preferably MEM 1.1.0.
Additionally
4.) Set Login_timeout to 15 or 30 seconds
I contacted EqualLogic support and they replied:
Solution Title HOWTO: Disabling TCP Delayed ACK may improve read performance with ESX 3.x/4.x/5.x software iSCSI initiator.Solution Details ESX allows you to disable the delayed ACK on your ESX host through a configuration option and may improve the read performance of storage attached to ESX software through the iSCSI initiator. PLEASE NOTE: this change will require a reboot of the ESX server to take effect.
Disabling Delayed Ack in ESX 4.0, 4.1, and 5.x
1. Log in to the vSphere Client and select the host.
2. Navigate to the Configuration tab.
3. Select Storage Adapters.
4. Select the iSCSI vmhba to be modified.
5. Click Properties.
6. Modify the delayed Ack setting using the option that best matches your site’s needs.
Choose one of the below options, I, II or II, then move on to step 7 after making the changes:
Option I:
Modify the delayed Ack setting on a discovery address (recommended).
A. On a discovery address, select the Dynamic Discovery tab.
B. Select the Server Address tab.
C. Click Settings.
D. Click Advanced.
7. In the Advanced Settings dialog box, scroll down to the delayed Ack setting.
8. Uncheck Inherit From parent. (Does not apply for Global modification of delayed Ack)
9. Uncheck DelayedAck.
10. Reboot the ESX host.
—
NOTE: From http://communities.vmware.com/message/2078917#2078917
One thing about Delayed ACK, is that you have to verify that the change took place. If you just change it, it appears that only new LUNs will inherit the value. (disable) I find that, while in maint mode, removing the discovery address and any discovered targets (in static discovery tab), then disabling Delayed ACK and re-add in Discovery Address and rescan resolves this.
At the ESX console run: #vmkiscsid –dump-db | grep Delayed All the entries should end with =’0′ for disabled. ( note that is a – – two dashes before the dump-db silly WP font)
I ran it and experienced the same, only some of the connections had the DelayedAck set correctly. So definitely remove the discovery address and static targets to fix.
—
To disable LRO from http://communities.vmware.com/thread/419234
|
HOWTO: Disable Large Receive Offload (LRO) in ESX v4/v5
|
|||
| Solution Details |
Within VMware, the following command will query the current LRO value.# esxcfg-advcfg -g /Net/TcpipDefLROEnabledTo set the LRO value to zero (disabled):# esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Net/TcpipDefLROEnabledNOTE: a server reboot is required.
Info on changing LRO in the Guest network. http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Disable_LRO To disable LRO, follow this procedure:
Your guest VMs should now have normal TCP networking performance. |
||
—
Set Login Time Out
This vmware 5.1 document points to this KB article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2007829
Addendum
—
On second review the Official Documentation for the EqualLogic MEM (Rev 1.2, which covers vSphere 5.1)
http://www.equallogic.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=11000
Advises:
Deployment Considerations: iSCSI Login Timeout on vSphere 5.1 and5.0
The default value of 5 seconds for iSCSI logins on vSphere 5.x is too short in some
circumstances. For example: In a large configuration where the number of iSCSI
sessions to the array is close to the limit of 1024 per pool. If a severe network
disruption were to occur, such as the loss of a network switch, a large number of iSCSI
sessions will need to be reestablished. With such a large number of logins occurring,
some logins will not be completely processed within the 5 second default timeout
period.
Dell therefore recommends applying patch ESXi500-201112001 and increasing the ESXi
5.0 iSCSI Login Timeout to 60 seconds to provide the maximum amount of time for
such large numbers of logins to occur.
If the patch is installed prior to installing the EqualLogic MEM, the MEM installer will
automatically set the iSCSI Login Timeout to the Dell recommended value of 60
seconds.
Automatically setup is nice in theory but doesn’t appear to work with ESX5.1 ??? I had to set mine to 60 manually
I was able to find these three recommendations under the support portal under here https://support.equallogic.com/support/solutions.aspx?id=1444
They are
HOWTO: Disable Large Receive Offload (LRO) in ESX v4/v5
HOWTO: Change Login timeout value ESXi v5.0 // Requires ESX patch ESXI500-201112001
Filed under: equallogic, ESXi 5.1, vmware | Tagged: vmware | 6 Comments »
