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September 13th, 2010 13:00

NPIV for virtual ECC server

I need to configure about 100+ gatekeepers for one of our ECC servers which is a VM guest and which we use to monitor synchronous replication and other status type things so it needs to see about 12 arrays.  The guest is running Windows on VSPhere 4.0.  I have configured NPIV and the virtual WWNs show up on the fabric and in the login lists for the symmetrix arrays but I can't add any more devices to the VM guest.  The gatekeepers show up on the ESX storage configuration already so no problem there.

According to the procedures I have found, I have to edit settings for the VM and add each device as a physical RDM, which I have done.  But once I reached 60 devices I can't add any more.  I found a VMWare document which does list SCSI devices with a maximum of 60 (15 per SCSI controller, max 4 SCSI controllers per guest) but I thought since I was using NPIV I could add more than that.

I would appreciate any help here, thanks.

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219 Posts

September 23rd, 2010 07:00

Hi, NPIV is just to use multiple WWNs on one switch port.

see in "http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_config_max.pdf" page 1

-> Virtual SCSI targets per virtual machine 60

So you got out of vmware`s max scsi devices per VM.

I would set up a second server for and then install just SYM ans SDM agent to this and monitor half of your arrays by this vm.

79 Posts

September 24th, 2010 13:00

You may be able to add additional SCSI targets on your VM.  If memory serves me correct you can have up to 4 virtual SCSI adapters per VM.  Usually by default the VM is configured with 2, so you may have 2 additional you can add.

Other than that, I would check the ESX reference material to see what the max and mins are for RDM LUNS per virtual SCSI adapter.

15 Posts

September 24th, 2010 16:00

We also talked to VMware on this one and the stated maximum of 60 devices for SCSI devices is true.  NPIV is to be used as a security configuration rather than a way to add more than the maximum devices.  The only way we can get more gatekeepers on a VM guest is to use iSCSI and bypass the ESX host.

Thanks for all the answers.

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