Install Guide

5 Best Practices for Sharing an iSCSI SAN Infrastructure with Dell PS Series and SC Series Storage using VMware vSphere

Hosts | 2015-A-BP-INF

1 Introduction

Dell™ PS Series and Dell EMC™ SC Series storage systems both support storage area networks (SANs)

over the iSCSI protocol. This document provides best practices for deploying:

 VMware

vSphere™ host servers connected to an existing PS Series storage target to

simultaneously connect to an SC Series storage target over a shared iSCSI SAN infrastructure

(shared)

 VMware vSphere host servers with both PS Series and SC Series storage targets, where only the

iSCSI SAN infrastructure is shared: each host connects to either PS Series or SC Series storage

targets (dedicated)

This paper also provides analysis of performance and high availability of the shared iSCSI SAN infrastructure

consisting of PS Series and SC Series arrays.

1.1 Scope

The scope of this paper focuses on the following:

 Dedicated switches for iSCSI storage traffic

 Non-DCB (Data Center Bridging) enabled iSCSI SAN

 Standard TCP/IP implementations utilizing standard network interface cards (NICs)

 VMware vSphere ESXi operating-system-provided software iSCSI initiator

 Virtual LAN (VLAN) untagged solution

 IPv4 only for PS Series and SC Series

The scope of this paper does not include the following:

 1GbE or mixed-speed iSCSI SAN (combination of 1GbE and 10GbE)

 DCB or sharing the same SAN infrastructure for multiple traffic types

 iSCSI offload engine (iSOE)

 NIC partitioning (NPAR)

 VLAN tagging at the switch, initiator, or target

 SC Series storage systems using Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) SAN connectivity

 Non-MPIO (Multipath Input/Output) implementation

1.2 Audience

This paper is for storage administrators, network administrators, SAN system designers, storage consultants,

or anyone tasked with configuring a SAN infrastructure for PS Series and SC Series storage. It is assumed

that readers have experience in designing and/or administering a shared storage solution. There are

assumptions made in terms of familiarity with all current Ethernet standards as defined by the Institute of

Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) as well as TCP/IP standards defined by the Internet Engineering

Task Force (IETF) and FC standards defined by the T11 committee and the International Committee for

Information Technology Standards (INCITS).