Are you running an HPE Nimble or HPE Alletra 6000 SAN in your VMware environment with iSCSI? A commonly overlooked component of the solution architecture and configuration when using these SAN’s is HPE Nimble and HPE Alletra 6000 SAN IP Zoning with an ISL (Inter-Switch Link).
When it comes to implementing these SANs, it’s all about data availability, performance, optimizations, and making sure it’s done properly.
I want to share with you some information, as I feel this important and required configuration consideration is often ignored, with many IT professionals not being aware it exists.
I recently had a customer that purchased and deployed two HPE Alletra 6010 SANs for their VMware environment, where I was contracted to implement these SANs. Even though the customer purchased HPE Technical Installation and Startup Services, the HPE installer was not aware of IP Address Zoning and it’s purpose, advising us to disable it.
I actually had to advise the technician that numerous HPE technical documents recommended to enable and configure it when you have an ISL. He then researched it, and confirmed we should have it enabled and configured.
When you have SAN switches that include an ISL (inter-switch link) that are connected to an HPE Nimble or HPE Alletra SAN, it’s preferred not to have traffic go across that interlink, as it creates additional hops for packets, as well as increases latency.
However, in the event of a switch, NIC, and/or path failure, we do want to have the interlink available to facilitate data access and be available when required.
Using NCM (Nimble Connection Manager) and SCM (Storage Connection Manager) on your VMware ESXi hosts, the HPE Nimble and HPE Alletra storage solution can intelligently choose when to use the interlink depending on paths available, and the current health of SAN connectivity. It does this through IP Address Zones.
You must have the NCM or SCM plugin installed on your ESXi hosts to be able to use IP Address Zones, and use the HPE Nimble Storage path selection policy (NIMBLE_PSP_DIRECTED).
To implement this, you’ll need to assign an IP Zone to each of your switches. Please see below for a table from HPE Alletra documentation:
You can choose to either bisect the subnet, or use a method of dedicating even numbered IPs to one switch/zone, and dedicating odd numbered IPs to the other switch/zone.
This allows you to zone each switch, and keep traffic in the zone avoiding use of the interlink which would cause additional hops and latency. You’ll need to configure on the storage array the Zone Type you selected.
In the event of a failure, the interlink will be available for non-optimized path access to ensure continued data access.
While most of us frequently deploy new ESXi hosts, a question and task not oftenly discussed is how to properly decommission a VMware ESXi host. Some might be surprised to… Read More
This guide will outline the instructions to Disable the VMware Horizon Session Bar. These instructions can be used to disable the Horizon Session Bar (also known as the Horizon Client… Read More
Normally, any VMs that are NVIDIA vGPU enabled have to be manually migrated with manual vMotion if a host is placed in to maintenance mode, to evacuate the host. While… Read More
You may experience GPU issues with the VMware Horizon Indirect Display Driver in your environment when using 3rd party applications which incorrectly utilize the incorrect display adapter. This results with… Read More
Today we're going to cover a powerful little NAS being used with VMware; the Synology DS923+ VMware vSphere Use case and Configuration. This little (but powerful) NAS is perfect for… Read More
Today we'll go over how to install the vSphere vCenter Root Certificate on your client system. Certificates are designed to verify the identity of the systems, software, and/or resources we… Read More
