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Need help with sharing virtual luns across 2 VMs with VxVM

meghana
Level 2
I need to share luns across 2 windows 2003 VMs on ESX3.5. For this prupose I created virtual luns and shared them across the VMs. But once I bring up the VMs and the VxVM takes charge of the virtual luns, the VM loses its remote connectivity. The remote IP seems to be lost. Trying to reconfigure the IP throws a message that the IP is already in use.

Is VxVM supported on VM? Or is the problem seen because I am using virtual luns?

Any help would be great.
5 REPLIES 5

Jay_Kim
Level 5
Employee Accredited Certified
SFW can be installed on ESX VM. I use it myself without issues.

When you present new luns, Windows will pick them up via plug and play and show up in device manager.
We also see them as new harddisks. But we do not "take charge" of them until you actually create a diskgroup with them.
If they are just blank basic disks, SFW is not touching them or managing/owning it at all.

Not sure why you would lose access to the network. I think that may not have anything to do with SFW as it should not cause any IP/Network issues.

meghana
Level 2
Thanks Jay for responding.

A lil more background to my problem:
I need to install a VCS cluster across 2 Windows VMs.  I started out by using 2 VMs on the same ESX server for practice purposes.
As per my understanding I will need to have shared access to luns from both the VMs to setup a cluster. So, i created virtual luns (not SAN disks) and assigned them to both VMs.
Now since the luns are shared and they have to be under some multipathing software, I got them under VEA. Once I did this I lost remote connectivity to the machines. Now I can only connect to the machines by the Virtual Infrastructure client.

I have done these steps assuming the shared luns have to be under the control of VxVM before setting up a cluster. 

Please shed some light on how to share the luns while setting up VCS on VMs as the install guide does not mention anything about it.

Jay_Kim
Level 5
Employee Accredited Certified
1 question, is this VCS or SFW HA? I'll assume you are using SFWHA. (Using our volume manager + VCS)

>> "Now since the luns are shared and they have to be under some multipathing software,"

This in incorrect. Multipathing solution for disks such as DMP is only needed if each VM sees two or more separate paths to the same lun/harddisk.
Simply put, if you presented only 10 harddisks to 1 VM and that VM sees only 10 harddisks in VEA without having DMP, you do not need a multipathing solution,

If they are just virtual harddisks with a virtual scsi adaptor set to "Virtual" for the harddisks, then usually, this is only 1 path.
So you would not need to install any multipathing solution such as VxDMS if this is how you set it up in ESX.

Other than this, it's same on ESX as physical servers for creating a VCS environment.

meghana
Level 2
Yes, its SFW HA 5.0.

Thanks for the quick response. I will remove the VxVM and try setting up the VCS directly.

Will keep you posted how it goes.

Jay_Kim
Level 5
Employee Accredited Certified
If it is SFW HA 5.0, make sure to remove only VxDMP DSM or ASL DMP. (I'm saying this as VxVM is actually short term for volume manager which you should not be removing)
You will either have a DDI DSM package under add/remove programs or in the add/remove section of the SFWHA Server components.