System information

Because this array is an active/passive disk array, the following general considerations apply.
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To avoid the possibility of path thrashing, the default multipathing policy is Most Recently Used, not
Fixed. The ESX/ESXi system sets the default policy when it identifies the array.
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Automatic volume resignaturing is not supported for AX100 storage devices.
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To use boot from SAN, make sure that the active SP is chosen for the boot LUN’s target in the HBA BIOS.
IMPORTANT If the EMC CLARiiON CX storage systems use the ALUA protocol, your host cannot boot from
the systems or display VMFS datastores deployed on them. With ALUA enabled, these storage systems do not
support SCSI-2 reservations that ESX/ESXi requires for its operations.
EMC CLARiiON AX100 and RDM
On EMC CLARiiON AX100 systems, RDMs are supported only if you use the Navisphere Management Suite
for SAN administration. Navilight is not guaranteed to work properly.
To use RDMs successfully, a given LUN must be presented with the same LUN ID to every ESX/ESXi host in
the cluster. By default, the AX100 does not support this configuration.
AX100 Display Problems with Inactive Connections
When you use an AX100 FC storage device directly connected to an ESX/ESXi system, you must verify that all
connections are operational and unregister any connections that are no longer in use. If you do not, ESX/ESXi
cannot discover new LUNs or paths.
Consider the following scenario:
An ESX/ESXi system is directly connected to an AX100 storage device. The ESX/ESXi has two FC HBAs. One
of the HBAs was previously registered with the storage array and its LUNs were configured, but the
connections are now inactive.
When you connect the second HBA on the ESX/ESXi host to the AX100 and register it, the ESX/ESXi host
correctly shows the array as having an active connection. However, none of the LUNs that were previously
configured to the ESX/ESXi host are visible, even after repeated rescans.
To resolve this issue, remove the inactive HBA, unregister the connection to the inactive HBA, or make all
inactive connections active. This causes only active HBAs to be in the storage group. After this change, rescan
to add the configured LUNs.
Pushing Host Configuration Changes to the Array
When you use an AX100 storage array, no host agent periodically checks the host configuration and pushes
changes to the array. The axnaviserverutil cli utility is used to update the changes. This is a manual operation
and should be performed as needed.
The utility runs only on the service console and is not available with ESXi.
EMC Symmetrix Storage Systems
EMC Symmetrix storage systems work with ESX/ESXi hosts in FC SAN configurations. Generally, you use the
EMC software to perform configurations.
The following settings are required on the Symmetrix networked storage system. For more information, see
the EMC documentation.
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Common serial number (C)
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Auto negotiation (EAN) enabled
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Fibrepath enabled on this port (VCM)
Chapter 4 Setting Up SAN Storage Devices with ESX/ESXi
VMware, Inc. 35