Equallogic PS6100X: direct (dual) iscsi connections to 3 vmware ESX Hosts

See this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1584108

Is auite a big decision now for me... I cannot test it first.

I wonder if storage that is connected by ESX with iscsi and that is 'shared storage' for all hosts, is the same as direct attached storage.

Normally when speaking about DAS, it is not shared?

Hello, thank you for the answer.

Are you 100% certain it will not work, while it certainly worked on the MD3200i?

Where can I find back (documentation?) that direct attach is not supported?

Is it because you cannot place the SAN ports in different subnets?

The Compatibility Matrix only shows >2K USD tested switches, that would cost me about 5K additional costs to put 2 of those in stack.

Not even Catalyst 2960 is mentioned, why use L3 switches just for that simple purpose...

While if I read the configuration guide, and if I would be OK with a cold-standby switch, I can use a 200 dollar unmanaged rack mounted Netgear switch (with low latency).

I assume I cannot use 2 unmaged switches, for a sort like reason that direct attached is not supported?

Ok thanks a lot for your answer.

I can see this is definitely not 'supported'.

But as I read your answer... it probably will 'work' without switches, but will not have good performance at high loads?

So to be OK with Dell, we shoud use at least Cisco 3750X switches?

Lots of threads using 2960S stacked are found, but not in the Dell support list...

Thank you very much for the information.

"The arrays design is such that any configured port is expected to be able to reach any server. (or other member in the group)"

But what happens if this is not.

Will it only cause "dropped connections" at high loads or will it just not work?

And are "dropped connections" just some lagging on the vmware hosts or will it cause a permanent or fail?

We will only be running a total of 30 virtual machines on those 3 hosts, in a production (non-IT) environment.

The only "burst" that I can think of is when some Backups are taken, or when deploying the VM's initially.

If that causes some reconnections or dropped TCP/IP packets, that is no problem as long as things keep running and the packets are resent.

We do not need this SAN to work on it's top performance limits.

It is just strange to introduce 6K on switches when enough NIC ports are available to do direct/redundant connections.

I would go so far, as if you've actually talked with Dell Sales, and they did not tell you would need to budget for switches. then someone has failed.

Equallogic arrays are really nice, but they are simply not designed for the senario you want to do.

Wanting to run a production enviroment on an Unsupported configuration. I cant even imagine why anyone would do that. The risk of dataloss is real, and the solution is purchasing a couple of switches that allow for iSCSI.  If you want to save money, find some refurbished Powerconnect 6248. I use them myself, and they are fine switches. 599$ on ebay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWERCONNECT-6248-48-PORT-GIGABIT-ETHERNET-SWITCH-6ZHK7F1-QTYs-INSTOCK-/171147626476?pt=US_Network_Switches&hash=item27d93187ec

Hi,

We went for the 3750X series, stacked.

But now the customer wants to remove the "network" switches that were included in the orders and use the same 3750X stacked switch for this.

So the switch would be used for SAN and Network traffic, both.

We are planning to seperate the switch with VLANs internally.

Is this supported?

Or is this again an issue :(

Hello,

We have a few more question about this.

Is the 3750E good enough or does it need to be the 3750X? Only difference I can find is features like power stack?

We are reported by customers that these switches cannot be configured jumbo frames for certain ports, but only for the entire switch.

So that would mean jumbo frames cannot be enabled.

The same people report that they had problems when jumbo frames were not enabled, and dell recommended them to enabled this and this solved to problem. But we cannot do this when the switch is shared for network traffic.

Can you give me any input on this please?

It has been 2 years now, but I wanted to inform that we did use dedicated stacked Cisco 3750X switches (24p) combined with cisco specific switch settings from Equallogic documentation and combined with R720 equallogic plugins for ESX, all with best practices.

The system has been running under heavy load but runs very good.