Best pratice for vSphere 5

One of my favorite series of posts is from a gentleman by the name of Ken Cline (who now works for VMware).  He put out a series of posts called, "The Great vSwitch Debate"  (You know it is a good post when you have to read it several times over to let it all soak in).  In part 7 kensvirtualreality.wordpress.com/.../the-great-vswitch-debate-part-7  he outlines configurations for various numbers of physical NICs.  While it was written in the middle of 2009, many of the practices still hold up very well today.  Take a look.

If you are working with PowerConnect 6224 switches, you may see a mix of conflicting configuration information.  It will drive you nuts, and ultimately things won't work correctly.  Go to itforme.wordpress.com/.../reworking-my-powerconnect-6200-switches-for-my-iscsi-san where I outline the EXACT steps for building up the 6224's correctly.  

With 16 NICs and a single PS4000, my recommendation would be (per host):

- 2 NICs for iSCSI (the PS4000 only has 2 active iSCSI ports, so why 'waste' more than 2 NICs for iSCSI unless you plan to add an additional PS-array some time soon, or you want to do guest-attached-iSCSI (2 more NICs, but in 2 separate vSwitches))

- 2 NICs for management (vSwitch0 typically)

- 2 NICs for vMotion (2 VMkernels too, for more bandwidth (single VMkernel would use the 2 NICs for failover)

- if you have Enterprise or Enterprise Plus, and want to use FT, 2 NICs reserved for this

- rest for VM LAN access. In a flat network, you could split them up some. If you have a VLAN'd network and a need to have different VMs access different VLANs, you'd set up the vSwitch with multiple VLANs (multiple Virtual Machine Port Groups) and your physical switch should be set up to accommodate this.

Check TR1074 (may have been linked by Don) on a proper vSphere5 setup with an iSCSI heartbeat.

Hy Don,

Thanks for advising and supporting the EqualLogic community.

Why you configure iSCSI with RR and don't use MEM for vSphere?

Using MEM will set a better RR policy? Or do you you prefer RR for other reasons?

Regards,

Hy Don,

Thanks for you explenation! I forget PSP is only for Enterprise(+)... And yes we have multi-member pools (also benefits in Load Balancing). And 2 iSCSI nics per host. Total amount of connections is indeed an item to keep in mind (max 1024 per pool).

Do you advice also change IOPs for MEM or does it only applies to RR because of the intelligent MEM technics?

Hy Don,

(I can't edit my previous post, so I create a new reply)

I read another post of you on this community site (reply in: iSCSI PS6100 Error - iSCSI login to target from initiator failed) and you said: "Lastly, if you are not using the EQL MPIO driver for ESXi v5, MEM 1.1,  then you should change the IOPs value in the VMware Round Robin from 1000 IOs between switching to next path, to 3.  Otherwise you won't get full benefit out of multiple interfaces."

So it answers my question about the IOPs value for MEM ;).

Do you have any other performance / optimizing tips for vSphere and iSCSI? I just found the White Paper "Latency-Sensitive Workloads in vSphere Virtual Machines" what also describes some interesting tuning tips.

Regards,

Arjen

Will Urban wrote this nice post on a few things that are of value with regards to your question.

en.community.dell.com/.../data-drives-in-vmware.aspx   Dell also puts out a few other nice documents.

Good summary of considerations Don.

I thought the changing of the SCSI adapter for each VMDK was one of the more interesting tidbits I pulled from Will's post.  I looked for some additional technical information that supports/explains the reasoning behind that in more detail, but couldn't find any.

Well put.  Thanks Don.

Don, what have you found as the most effective way to verify that both paths are being balanced correctly?

I'm just wondering what the reasoning behind disabling LRO is - can anyone confirm the reasoning behind why it needs to be disabled?

Thanks, David

Thanks for all this fantastic information.

I've just upgrade to ESX 5.1 and so If i'm installing the Equallogic Multipathing plugin, then all I also need to do is disable LRO and Delayed ACK on the iscsi adapters?

Hi Don,

Can you explain why LSO doesn't need disabling if LRO does please?

Hi Don, just curious, can we expect an updated official vSphere with EqualLogic best practices document/guide from EqualLogic anytime soon?