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Deployment Guide—VMware IaaS on PowerEdge MX Servers and PowerMax Storage
Introduction Predeployment Requirements Physical Layout Network Configuration SAN Storage Deployment and Configuration Management Cluster Deployment
Installing ESXi on the management hosts
Configuring the ESXi management network
Configuring standard virtual switches
Creating a management datastore from the PowerMax LUN
Deploying vCenter Server Appliance
Adding vCenter Server to Unisphere storage management
Configuring Active Directory authentication (optional)
Disabling SSH on ESXi hosts (optional)
Configuring the management cluster
Compute Cluster Deployment Management Software and Data Protection Deployment References Site Survey

Creating a management datastore from the PowerMax LUN

Creating a management datastore from the PowerMax LUN

  • In preparation for deployments of vCenter and other management VMs, create a shared datastore for the management cluster:

    1. In the vCenter Web Client, go to Hosts and Clusters and select the first management host.
    1. In the right pane, click Storage Adapters.
    2. Click Rescan.
    3. Click Datastores, and then click New datastore.
    4. In the New Datastore wizard, select Create new VMFS datastore, and then click Next.
    5. On the Name and device selection page, provide a name for the datastore in the Datastore name field.
    6. Select the LUN that was created for the management cluster in Adding cluster hosts to the storage array on page 32, and then click Next.

    If the LUN is not visible, verify the zoning configuration on the FC switches and the management host access in Unisphere storage management.

    1. On the VMFS version page, select a VMFS version.
    2. On the Partition configuration page, adjust the Datastore Size if needed, and then click Next.
    3. On the Ready to complete page, click Finish.

    Multipathing optimization

    Block storage that is presented to vSphere hosts from the PowerMax system has the native Path Selection Policy (PSP) of round-robin (RR) applied by default. While RR is the recommended PSP to apply to PowerMax block storage, the default number of IOPS between the switching of paths is 1,000.

    You can reduce the default number of IOPS for all PowerMax LUNs on each vSphere host so that all paths are used more efficiently by running the following CLI command:

    for i in `esxcfg-scsidevs -c |awk '{print $1}' | grep naa.XXXX`; do esxcli storage nmp psp roundrobin deviceconfig set --type=iops --iops=# --device=$i; done

    where XXXX is the first four digits of the PowerMax disk (or endpoint) devices found by running the following CLI command:

    esxcli storage nmp device list

    and # is the number of IOPS that you want between the switching of paths.

    Additionally, you can create a claim rule to automatically set this value on LUNs that are later mapped to the host by running the following CLI command:

    esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -s "VMW_SATP_ALUA_CX" -V "DGC" -P "VMW_PSP_RR"

    -O "iops=1"