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SRM and MS iSCSI Volumes
Was wondering if anyone knew how the EqualLogic boxes handle SRM and MS iSCSI volumes. Have a bunch of VMs that have separate MS iSCSI volumes attached that are replicating between sites. But when doing a Test Failover in SRM it doesn't bring those iSCSI volumes back in. I am guessing this might have to be a manual process which wouldn't be fun. Has anyone encountered this or know a work around or if this should work?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Dev Mgr
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4 Operator
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July 22nd, 2010 06:00
This doesn't really surprise me as SRM is for managing ESX; so it can manage your ESX servers and their VMs. Therefor it doesn't know about the VMs' connectivity via their own iSCSI initiator to (more) volumes.
I'd suggest to give the volumes to the ESX servers and use passthrough disks to the VMs that need those disks.
I know of 2 situations where this isn't really an option:
- you need a VM to have a datadisk larger than 2TB (probably smarter to keep this system physical in this situation)
- you want to run a Windows 2008 (R2?) cluster with virtual machines; these could be systems that aren't 'recoverable' with SRM and you may need to look into another solution (e.g. so-called geo-cluster or so).
mfkelly_tx
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August 17th, 2010 08:00
I believe you'll want to use a combination of ASM/VE snapshots and replication sets when you get your replication setup for use with SRM. Within ASM/VE it has the option to also snap the "guests iSCSI targets". I wouldn't use RDM as it will cause numerous limitations on your VMware environment.
mfkelly_tx
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August 17th, 2010 09:00
Page 37 of this document briefly touches on the subject of SRM and guest iSCSI volumes. http://www.equallogic.com/uploadedFiles/Resources/Tech_Reports/TR1039-Dell-EqualLogic-PS-Series-SAN-and-VMware-SRM.pdf