User guide

Technical white paper | HP Enterprise Virtual Array Storage and VMware vSphere 4.x and 5.x configuration best practices
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How do I simplify storage management, even in a complex environment with multiple
storage systems?
• Use the Storage Module for vCenter to save time and improve efficiency by mapping, monitoring, provisioning, and
troubleshooting EVA storage directly from vCenter.
• In multi-vendor, ALUA-compliant SAN environment, you should select the default PSP for the VMW_SATP_ALUA based on
the PSP that has been recommended for one of the following:
– The most prevalent array in the SAN
– The array with the most Vdisks provisioned for vSphere access
• In an exclusively EVA environment, change the default PSP option for VMW_SATP_ALUA to VMW_PSP_RR.
• Round robin I/O path policy is recommended for EVA active-active arrays. MRU is also suitable if round robin is not desired
in a particular environment.
• Configure MSCS cluster Vdisks to use MRU I/O path policy. Since the recommended default setting for all EVA Vdisks is
round robin, you must manually configure MSCS Vdisks to MRU.
• Alternate the controller ownership of EVA Vdisks between Controller A and Controller B by configuring the Path-A-
Failover/Failback or Path-B-Failover/Failback setting.
• With vSphere 4.1/5x, create a new SATP rule for each storage system.
• Use the same Vdisk ID for all vSphere servers in the same cluster.
• Use a simplified name for your datastores and be consistent, thus accommodating vSphere hosts you may later add to
the cluster.
• To properly align the filesystem, use the vSphere client when creating a datastore.
• When naming a datastore, use the same name you selected in Command View EVA when creating the logical unit/Vdisk.
• Utilize HP Insight Control Storage Module for vCenter to save time and improve efficiency by mapping, monitoring,
provisioning, and troubleshooting EVA storage directly from vCenter.
• When all GbE ports are connected to the iSCSI SAN and two NICs are used at the host, use Static discovery to control the
host access to desired targets when using a 1GbE iSCSI Module option.
• To simplify configuration of the 1GbE iSCSI Module and meet adequate high availability, use Dynamic discovery at the ESX
host when only two NICs are accessing the iSCSI SAN and up to two GbE ports are used per controller.
• When all 10GbE ports are connected to the iSCSI SAN and two NICs are used at the host, use Dynamic discovery to simply
configuration and meet adequate high availability with a 10GbE iSCSI Module option.
• Space reclamation in ESXi 5.0U1, ESXi 5.1 and ESXi 5.5 is recommend to be performed during a maintenance window.
• Set the Vdisk access mode to write-through and immediately set it back to write-back and retry the reclaim operation
when the expected reclaimed capacity is consistently less than 80% and when the 99% reclaim flag is used.
How can I best monitor and tune the EVA array in order to optimize performance?
• If increasing the queue depth at the HBA level, also increase the value of the vSphere advanced parameter
Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding.
• When using VMs with I/O-intensive workloads, consider using paravirtualized virtual adapters for the VM’s data logical
units, which can provide a 10% – 40% performance improvement, depending on the workload.
• Unless using Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008, ensure that data drives within the guest OS are
properly aligned.
• When using VMs that generate large-sized I/Os, consider setting the vSphere 4.x/5.x advanced parameter
Disk.DiskMaxIOSize to 128 KB to increase storage performance.
• HP recommends leaving QFullSampleSize and QFullThreshold at their default – disabled – values and, instead,
investigating the root cause of any I/O congestion. If you do choose to enable adaptive queuing, HP recommends the
following settings:
– QFullSampleSize = 32
– QFullThreshold = 4
• Use EVAperf to monitor EVA performance in order to make proactive adjustments.
• VMFS datastore must be aligned to either a 64KiB or 1MB boundary for use with HP EVA Storage VAAI integration.
• For improved performance, when performing zeroing activities on two or more Vdisks concurrently, it is best to have the
Vdisks ownership evenly spread across controllers.
• XCOPY operations can benefit from increased performance when different EVA controllers own the source and
destination datastores.