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Mapping volumes to an ESXi server
21 Dell EMC SC Series: Best Practices with VMware vSphere | 2060-M-BP-V
In the mapping wizard, the system can auto select the LUN number, or a preferred LUN number can be
manually specified from the advanced settings screen shown in Figure 8.
Manually specifying a LUN in the advanced settings screen
This advanced option allows administrators who already have a LUN numbering scheme to continue using it.
However, if a LUN is not manually specified, the system automatically selects a LUN for each volume
incrementally starting at LUN 1.
Timesaver: When naming volumes from within the SC Series user interface, it may be helpful to specify the
LUN number as part of the volume name. This naming helps to quickly identify which volumes are mapped
using each LUN.
6.3 Multipathed volume concepts
If there are ESXi hosts that have multiple initiator ports, ESXi has integrated functionality to provide native
multipathing of volumes over multiple supported protocols.
Building on the previous example, here is an example of multipathing mappings:
Volume: "LUN10-vm-storage" → Mapped to ESXi1/HBA1 -as- LUN 10
Volume: "LUN10-vm-storage" → Mapped to ESXi1/HBA2 -as- LUN 10
Volume: "LUN10-vm-storage" → Mapped to ESXi2/HBA1 -as- LUN 10
Volume: "LUN10-vm-storage" → Mapped to ESXi2/HBA2 -as- LUN 10
Volume: "LUN10-vm-storage" → Mapped to ESXi3/HBA1 -as- LUN 10
Volume: "LUN10-vm-storage" → Mapped to ESXi3/HBA2 -as- LUN 10
Note: With older versions of ESXi, if the LUN number is not consistent between multiple hosts or multiple
HBAs, VMFS datastores may not be visible to all nodes.