Avatar of Ben Hart
Ben Hart
Flag for United States of America asked on

Netapp + ESXi = Questions

Soon we will be setting up ESXi clusters on Netapp SANs.  What I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is exactly how to configure the Netapp side of things correctly.  I want all three ESXi hosts to access the same iSCSI lun, but where I'm falling short is how to configure that lun.

I setup a default LUN last year for two Hyper-V servers and while both servers could access and write to the LUN they could not see each others VM's.  Now that might be a Hyper-V limitation.. IDK exactly.  But having multiple hosts for failover won;t matter if I don;t setup the LUN correctly.

Can anyone lend a hand?
VMwareStorageVirtualization

Avatar of undefined
Last Comment
Ben Hart

8/22/2022 - Mon
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
See Pricing Options
Start Free Trial
GET A PERSONALIZED SOLUTION
Ask your own question & get feedback from real experts
Find out why thousands trust the EE community with their toughest problems.
Ben Hart

ASKER
So.. I thought NFS was a choice between it and CIFS.. Are you recommending the creation of an NFS export with the hypervisors as root or read/write allowances?
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

NetApp recommends the use of NFS, as performance could be better.

Depending upon your licenses, you can run iSCSI, CIFS and NFS at the same time.
Ben Hart

ASKER
Ahh gotcha.  Ok so what'd be a best practice move here?  I have two shelves for virtualization.. so 28x144gb.  Create an Aggregate with 28 drives, then create FlexVol, then an NFS export with the hypervisors as read/write allowances correct?
This is the best money I have ever spent. I cannot not tell you how many times these folks have saved my bacon. I learn so much from the contributors.
rwheeler23
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

Yes, that would be correct.
Ben Hart

ASKER
Awesome.. now would creating an AGG with all disks negatively affect the spares?
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

You should really include a spare! (unless you have a disk on standby on the shelf!)
⚡ FREE TRIAL OFFER
Try out a week of full access for free.
Find out why thousands trust the EE community with their toughest problems.
Ben Hart

ASKER
Ok cool deal.. I have 28 disks dedicate for VM storage so I created the agg with 24 disks, then a flexible volume and an NFS export.

Thanks Andrew, next time you are in rural Michigan let know and Ill buy you a beer!
Ben Hart

ASKER
Andrew is the man.