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July 24th, 2009 03:00

ESX and Lun design

Hi,

I am a little confused about the LUN design when using ESX server's which host Windows clustered VM's.

This is my take on how I think it should be setup and I would very much appreciate any comments.

I am going to connect two clustered ESX servers to my SAN. I will create a LUN and give both ESX servers access to this Lun which will be formatted a VMFS for the storage of VM images. The part that I'm unsure about is some of my VM's are going to running Microsoft clustering i.e. SQL servers.

My understanding is that the shared storage for the SQL servers will need to be RDM. Do I have to give the ESX servers access to the LUN that is going to be used for SQL database storeage.

Setup

ESX1 will have access to LUN 100 500gb vmfs
ESX2 will have access to LUN 100 500gb vmfs

VM_SQL1 will be installed on LUN 100 but will have it's D drive (RDM) located on LUN 110
VM_SQL2 will be installed on LUN 100 and will have access to LUN 110.

The ESX servers will not have access to LUN 110.

Is this correct?

Any assistance is much appreciated.

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20.4K Posts

July 24th, 2009 03:00

yes, you will present LUN 110 to your ESX cluster but how you present it to your VMs is different and described here (search for RDM):

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_3_server_config.pdf

5.7K Posts

July 24th, 2009 04:00

Your ESX hosts should have access to all the LUN's the VM's need to have access to. Your assumption is incorrect. LUN 110 needs to be in the storage group of both ESX hosts. However, since it's an RDM, you don't need to format LUN 110 as VMFS.
And another thing: you can attach a VMDK which resides on a VMFS as the shared storage to both cluster nodes. This doesn't have to be RDM (anymore).

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20.4K Posts

July 24th, 2009 06:00

Rob,

where have you seen that it's supported to use VMDK files for MSCS volumes ?

2.2K Posts

July 24th, 2009 08:00

VMware published a document titled "SQL Server Workload Consolidation" in which the drive layout for SQL VMs was not using RDM but a separate VMFS datastore per SQL VM for hosting a data VMDK and log VMDK.

2.2K Posts

July 24th, 2009 08:00

VMware published a document titled "SQL Server Workload Consolidation" in which the drive layout for SQL VMs was not using RDM but a separate VMFS datastore per SQL VM for hosting a data VMDK and log VMDK.

2.2K Posts

July 24th, 2009 10:00

Sorry about that. You are right, I did not catch that.

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20.4K Posts

July 24th, 2009 10:00

found it, page 19 says you can not use vmdk for clustered volumes

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_mscs.pdf

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20.4K Posts

July 24th, 2009 10:00

Aran,

i don't see any references to Microsoft Clustering ?

5.7K Posts

July 27th, 2009 02:00

I asked my friendly VMware specialist colleague. He said it's supported now and I do trust him somewhat ;)

5.7K Posts

July 27th, 2009 02:00

found it, page 19 says you can not use vmdk for clustered volumes


I guess I shouldn't trust my colleague anymore :(
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