White Papers

7 Configuring iSCSI Connectivity with VMware vSphere 6 and Dell PS Series Storage | TR1075
3 Configuring the vSphere iSCSI software initiator with PS
Series storage
Taking advantage of the vSphere iSCSI software initiator features requires advanced configuration by
vSphere administrators. vSphere 6 requires the use of the new vSphere Web Client to access the latest
features and will be used in this paper. Configuring both a vSphere Standard Switch (vSS) and vSphere
Distributed Switch (vDS) will be covered. The correct vSwitch type will be depend on your environment.
The rest of this document focuses on the installation and configuration of an iSCSI software initiator
connection to a PS Series SAN. Each of these steps can be found in the VMware iSCSI SAN Configuration
Guide, and where names and IP Addresses are used, they will be different for each environment. This is
merely an example of how to configure a new vSphere ESXi 6 environment correctly and connect it to the
PS Series SAN.
The following assumptions are made for this example:
 VMware ESXi 6 - the steps are similar for earlier releases
 Current Dell PS Series SAN Firmware
 More than one network interface card (NIC) set aside for iSCSI traffic
Not every environment will require all of the steps detailed in this paper.
The rest of this document assumes the environment is using multiple NICs and attaches to a PS Series SAN
utilizing the Native Multipathing Plug-in (NMP) from VMware.