Dell AX4-5 Specifications Page 1

EMC CLARiiON Integration with VMware ESX Server Applied Technology Abstract This white paper provides an

CLARiiON storage systems address a wide range of storage requirements by providing flexible levels of capacity, functionality, and performance. T

MirrorView/S Yes N/A MirrorView/A Yes N/A *Support for 10 hosts with the base pack and 64 hosts with the expansion enabler Why use CLARiiON wit

VMware vCenter server or the Management User Interface assigns a LUN or part of a LUN to the individual virtual machines. The VMware ESX/ESXi se

Booting from a CLARiiON storage system This section discusses the procedure for booting the VMware ESX server and guest operating systems—Windows

VMware does not support booting ESX Server over iSCSI storage using the software initiator; however, it does support booting VMs residing on iSCS

EMC CLARiiON Integration with Figure 3. Executing the lunmapinfo command issued on a Windows virtual machine and sent to the Navisphere Agent o

Figure 5. Using the Navisphere Server Utility with a VMware ESX 3.x/3i server Figure 6, Figure 7, and Figure 8 are examples for reports gener

Figure 7. Report generated by the Navisphere Server Utility showing configuration information for ESX 3.x Figure 8. Report generated by the

of auto assign) controls ownership of the LUN in a storage system with two SPs. For more information about the auto-assign LUN, please see Knowle

Figure 9. VMware’s native multipathing software on ESX Server 4.0 configured with the FIXED policy setting for CLARiiON storage systems EMC Pow

Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of

Figure 10. EMC PowerPath software configured on ESX 4.0 connected to a CLARiiON storage system iSCSI configurations and multipathing with ESX

VMware ESX Server Applied Technology 21 Figure 11. Dual virtual switch iSCSI configuration vSwitch 1 VMkernel port -&g

VMware ESXi, you can use VMware vCenter or the RemoteCLI package to see the number of paths to a given LUN. If you are using an ESX version with

Figure 14. VMware ESX Server 3.0 path information for iSCSI devices The vmkmultipath command, when issued on an ESX 2.x server, provides details

active path for some LUNs; however, this configuration is not persistent across reboots. After a reboot, the LUNs will be on a single HBA. The ad

EMC CLARiiON Integration with VMware ESX Server Applied Technology 25 Figure 16. Partitioning a CLARiiON LUN Raw Disk .vmdk file ESX Se

Raw device mapping (RDM) VMware ESX 2.5 introduced a new technology called raw device mapping (RDM); this is also called a mapped raw LUN when

VMFS-3 volume. Ensure that the VMFS-3 volume has enough space to accommodate the swap files. With ESX 2.x, a single swap file is used for all vir

VMware ESX 2.x to ensure the ESX service console and VMkernel see the additional space. Since the LUN is presented to the virtual machine, expans

Figure 17. VMFS datastore “Properties” dialog for LUN expansion on ESX 4.0 With ESX 3.5, after expanding the VMFS volume, you can expand the i

Table of Contents Executive summary ...5 Introduction..

When CLARiiON LUN migration is used to migrate to a larger LUN, after the migration completes, and a rescan is performed on the VMware ESX server

operating file system initializes all blocks, the virtual disk will need all the space to be allocated up front. Note that when the first write i

FC storage systems. Please note that remote replication software (MirrorView and SAN Copy) is supported on CLARiiON iSCSI storage systems: CLARi

system. Use Navisphere Manager or Navisphere CLI instead. The only commands that will work are admsnap flush and admhost flush. • VMFS volumes a

consistent data-disk replica of the RDM volume to a virtual machine connected directly (via iSCSI) to a CLARiiON storage system or a physical ser

ESX hosts) for VMotion with VMFS volumes create a single storage group for all ESX servers in a farm or cluster since LUNs may be assigned differ

VMware ESX Server Applied Technology 36 VMware ESX Server (Initiator)

Figure 21. VMware vCenter 4.0 management screen showing how VMotion migration is initiated and completed CLARiiON with VMware D

CLARiiON and virtual machine clustering Clustering refers to providing services through a group of servers to achieve high availability and/or sc

Virtual-to-virtual clustering VMware ESX Server 1 Virtual Machine 1 (Boot from Local Disks) Nonshared

CLARiiON and virtual machine clustering...38 In-the-box cluster ...

Physical-to-virtual clustering VMware ESX Server 1 Virtual Machine 1 (on Local disks) Nonshared CLARii

MV/CE and guest clustering using RDMs In this type of guest clustering, RDM volumes are assigned to the virtual machines and failover-cluster sof

Figure 25. Enable NPIV for a virtual machine after adding a RDM volume For some switches, the virtual WWNs’ names must be entered manually wit

The following points summarize the steps required to configure NPIV: 1. Ensure the HBA, switch, and ESX version support NPIV. 2. Assign a RDM v

The following steps outline the process for initializing an SRM environment using Navisphere Manager and/or Navisphere SecureCLI. The commands m

naviseccli –h SP ipaddress mirror –sync –addimage –name <name> -arrayhost <sp-hostname| sp ipaddress> -lun <lunnumber| lun uid>

5. If for some reason the mirrors are fractured, the syncgroup option (shown next), can be used to resynchronize the primary and secondary image

Configuring SnapView snapshots for SRM testing purposes via NaviSecCli 1. Add the LUNs bound for SnapView Sessions into the Reserved LUN Pool.

Table 6. Maximum number of async mirrors and consistency groups Parameter CX4-120 CX4-240 CX4-480 CX4-960 Total mirrors per storage system 256

Figure 29. SRM recovery plan During this test, you would see the following events occur: 1. Production VMs are still up and running 2. CLA

Executive summary EMC is aggressively expanding product sets from high-end to midtier markets. Through VMware—the industry leader of x86 server-v

VMware ESX Server Applied Technology 50 You should execute a SRM recovery plan only in the event of a declared disaster, to resume operation

VMware ESX Server Applied Technology 51 Figure 31. Virtual Machine tab available under ESX server Clicking on one of the virtual machine

In addition, a new report called the Virtual Machine report can now be generated with the Reporting wizard on the Navisphere Task Bar. This repor

Figure 34. Search for a virtual machine using the “Advanced Search” function in Navisphere Use Cases Issue with VM performance -- Find out whic

Validate changes made to the VMware environment -- Find and record all VM to all LUNs mapping. Before VM-aware Navisphere After VM-aware Navisp

 Authenticate your CLARiiON storage system using the symcfg command  Discover your CLARiiON storage system using the symcfg discover -clariio

Figure 37. Virtual machine and corresponding CLARiiON detailed LUN information visible within VMware vCenter For more detailed information on in

• iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_iscsi_san_cfg.pdf Appendix A: Copying data from a VMFS to

Appendix B: Using vm-support on VMware ESX Server VM support is the command tool used to aid in diagnostics and/or troubleshooting of the ESX ser

ESX Server — VMware’s high-end server product that installs directly on the physical hardware and therefore offers the best performance. ESX Serv

ESX overview ESX consists of virtualization software that provides server consolidation by allowing several instances of similar and dissimilar

Features ESX has several features that work with the CLARiiON storage system. The features discussed in this paper are VMotion, Distributed Resou

and events from the primary VM and sends them to the secondary VM, so the VMs are identical. The secondary VM can take over execution from the pr