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V4's avatar
V4
Level 6
12 years ago

VMware Datastore Zoning with Appliances

Very strange question came to me today.

Datastore zoning must be done directly to Appliance

or it should be via ESX!!!

Also how to identify slot and port # from back side panel of appliance

Backup and Recovery
NetBackup Appliance
Not Applicable
  • Mark_Solutions's avatar
    Mark_Solutions
    12 years ago
    By default Fibre Transport is disabled on a 5220 which is what you want to do VMWare backups and Tape out - this means any ports can be used for these functions If you enable Fibre Transport it can change the mode of the cards (target / initiator mode) which is for SAN Media Server functions - so dont enable it just for VMWare and Tape out functions. All datastore LUNS need to be zoned to the required ports (dont mix tape and datastore LUNS on the same ports) As for port numbering it depends on which model you are using - but you can get a feel for which ports are doing what via the CLISH Manage - FibreChannel section and then Scan to detect new mappings and Show to show what you have - this shows the WWN's of the cards and what is attached to them Multi-pathing is not supported, though there was some talk of it being so at 2.5.2, the biggest issue being with a memory leak (also supposedly solved in 2.5.2) Hope this helps

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  • wes12345's avatar
    wes12345
    Level 1
    4 years ago
    To clear things up for reference to others, FT or "fibre transport" is a target mode configuration from appliance point of view. It presents tape like devices to servers for backup.
    For VMware data stores, the datastore disks are zoned to normal initiator type fibre ports on the appliance. The appliance mounts the vmfs datastore locally to read from it the backup data.
  • V4's avatar
    V4
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Good sense of humour mark... Thank alot

  • Mark_Solutions's avatar
    Mark_Solutions
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    VMWare backups can be streamed via LAN or SAN - most people use SAN - but although it is via Fibre it is not Fibre Transport as referenced by NetBackup!

    Does that make sense? - So the transport is by Fibre but it is not NetBackup "Fibre Transport" !!

  • V4's avatar
    V4
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    mark if i go through ur statement, then i need to rethink on my presumtion that vmware backups can be streamed over FT

    Let me know if there are such limitations so far

  • Mark_Solutions's avatar
    Mark_Solutions
    Level 6
    12 years ago
    By default Fibre Transport is disabled on a 5220 which is what you want to do VMWare backups and Tape out - this means any ports can be used for these functions If you enable Fibre Transport it can change the mode of the cards (target / initiator mode) which is for SAN Media Server functions - so dont enable it just for VMWare and Tape out functions. All datastore LUNS need to be zoned to the required ports (dont mix tape and datastore LUNS on the same ports) As for port numbering it depends on which model you are using - but you can get a feel for which ports are doing what via the CLISH Manage - FibreChannel section and then Scan to detect new mappings and Show to show what you have - this shows the WWN's of the cards and what is attached to them Multi-pathing is not supported, though there was some talk of it being so at 2.5.2, the biggest issue being with a memory leak (also supposedly solved in 2.5.2) Hope this helps
  • Andrew_Madsen's avatar
    Andrew_Madsen
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    When you asked "Also how to identify slot and port # from back side panel of appliance" I asumed you wanted an answer. If so then that is in the manual.

    You cannot zone to an ESX host you can only backup via IP from the ESX host. You should only zone one path from the 5220 to the data store as there is a bug in the ESX code that prevents Linux hosts from creating a multipath configuration.

    You would zone as many Data stores as you feel you can backup in a window to the 5220. That number will depend on how many guests are on the volume and how much other traffic the 5220 handles.But it is much more than 1:1 datastore to appliance.

  • V4's avatar
    V4
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    hi andrew

    i 'm aware of port bindings in appliance. question was does datastore zoning requires ESX to be mediate or should be one to one with appliance

    datastore are alreay zoned to ESX, VMware and Storage guy are keen to minimize scope involved by limiting zoning to esx only.instead of datastore.

    more over datastores are using DMP for redundacy... so how zoning would take place in such scenario...