Basic SAN Connection Question - Connecting to corporate LAN

Question

Hi all,

I'm new to the communities and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction on a SAN network question.

We've just taken delivery of our first Equallogic PS4100 and will soon have an R620 with 2 quad port NIC cards and 2 * powerconnect switches. I've read all the best practice guides and the Equallogic configuration guide, so have a pretty good idea of how to set up a redundant SAN.

The part I'm stuck on (and I know this may seem a really basic question) is how to connect the workstations on the corporate LAN to the SAN? I understand the SAN should be isolated from the LAN traffic. We'll be using VMWare.

From reading the Equallogic configuration guides, 4 NIC ports should be used to connect to each switch from one quad port card. Does that mean the other quad port card should be used to connect to the corporate LAN ? I think that's the way it should but not 100%.

Hope the above makes sense and appreciate any help you can give me.

Thanks! :)

Dev Mgr · Accepted Answer

With 8 NICs I typically recommend something like this for the NIC assignments:

vSwitch0 (2 NICs) for management and vMotion (remove VM Network from this vSwitch)

vSwitch1 (2 NICs) for VM Network access

vSwitch2 (2 NICs) for host iSCSI access

The remaining 2 NICs can then be used for things like:

- VM Network access (either to the same LAN or to a different network (e.g. DMZ)

- VM iSCSI network access (for so-called guest-attached iSCSI)

- future expansion

Joe S586 · Answer

Sure, that's one way to do it, it all depends on the total number of interfaces you plan on using from each Quad NIC.

So, for instance you can use up to 4 of the interfaces from NIC_1 for iSCSI and up to 4 of the interfaces from NIC_2 for LAN traffic. In order to do this, you would need to setup the multipathing for ESX.

-joe

leebtish · Answer

Sorry, should have said, we'd like to use 4 interfaces for iSCSI traffic for redundancy.

leebtish · Answer

Thanks for the quick response Joe. Sounds like I'm on the right track.

Looking at the DELL quick set up guides it shows a server with a single quad port NIC using all 4 ports to connect to the switches so I figured that was the correct way to configure it. Obviously there's more than one way to set it up.

I was planning to the use the multipath extension module in ESX. Is there a better way to do this or a best practice ?

Should we be using 2 interfaces from NIC_1 for iSCSI and the other 2 for LAN or use all 4 for iSCSI ?

New to iSCSI storage so any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Dev Mgr · Answer

The 4100 only has 2 active iSCSI ports at any given time (the other controller/ports are for failover only). Unless you're planning to add another PS-array some time soon, it makes little sense to use more than 2 ports per host for iSCSI.

If you purchased your unit in the US, it should have an install service by Dell. I'd highly recommend using that to help set it up. You already paid for it, and would help ensure you get the best possible setup for your environment.

leebtish · Answer

Thanks for all the quick responses - Don / Dev Mgr.

Yep, we have a remote install service included from DELL as part of our service plan so will definitely be using it. Very impressed the install service is provided! To be honest, I'm always interested in how things fit together for troubleshooting and design purposes hence the reason for the questions.

Unfortunately we have purchased the VMWare Essentials Plus Kit as that was all our budget would allow so looks like we can't use the MEM. We're a relatively small shop and will only be running approx 10 VM's so Essentials Plus was the more cost effective option for us.

Thanks for the good points on the NIC's. We probably wouldn't have thought about adding redundancy for ESX management and VMotion. The reason I thought about using 4 ports on each host was to obtain maximum bandwidth in the event of a port failure. That way the corresponding port on the other controller takes over with no bandwidth loss.

However, Don made a good point about the interfaces rarely maxing out so using the ports for management and vMotion redundancy makes more sense.

This is our first venture in Virtualization so have lots to learn but getting there!

Thanks again for the responses, the information has been very helpful. Much appreciated!

leebtish · Answer

Awesome! Thanks very much.

EqualLogic

Basic SAN Connection Question - Connecting to corporate LAN

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