Tag Archive: Duncan Epping

May 23

vSphere Metro Storage Cluster white paper released!

I wanted to point you guys to a white paper that I have worked on for the last months. This white paper was written in collaboration with Lee Dilworth, Ken Werneburg, Frank Denneman and Stuart Hardman. Thanks guys for taking time out of your busy schedule to work with me on this project! This white paper is about vSphere Metro Storage Cluster solutions (aka stretched clusters) and specifically looks at things from a VMware perspective. Enjoy!

  • VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (VMware vMSC) is a new configuration within the VMware Hardware Compatibility List. This type of configuration is commonly referred to as a stretched storage cluster or metro storage cluster. It is implemented in environments where disaster/downtime avoidance is a key requirement. This case study was developed to provide additional insight and information regarding operation of a VMware vMSC infrastructure in conjunction with VMware vSphere. This paper will explain how vSphere handles specific failure scenarios and will discuss various design considerations and operational procedures.
    http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10284

vSphere Metro Storage Cluster white paper released!” originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Available now: vSphere 5 Clustering Deepdive. (paper | e-book)

Permanent link to this article: http://www.startswithv.com/2012/05/23/vsphere-metro-storage-cluster-white-paper-released/

May 17

Why is my pathing policy limited to “fixed” or “MRU” with things like MSCS cluster?

Yesterday I received an email from someone. He wanted to know why he was limited to using either the “fixed” or “MRU” pathing policy for the LUNs attached to his MSCS cluster. In his environment they used round-robin for everything and not being able to configure all of them with the same policy was against their internal policy. The thing is that if round-robin would be used and the path would switch (by default every 1000 I/Os) the SCSI-2 reservation would need to be re-acquired on this LUN. (MSCS uses SCSI-2 reservations for their cluster devices) As you can imagine that could cause a lot of stress on your array and could lead to all sorts of problems. So please do not ignore this recommendation! Some extra details can be found in the following KB articles:

Why is my pathing policy limited to “fixed” or “MRU” with things like MSCS cluster?” originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Available now: vSphere 5 Clustering Deepdive. (paper | e-book)

Permanent link to this article: http://www.startswithv.com/2012/05/17/why-is-my-pathing-policy-limited-to-fixed-or-mru-with-things-like-mscs-cluster/

May 16

KB article about SvMotion / VDS / HA problem republished with script to mitigate!

Just a second ago the GSS/KB team republished the KB article that explain the vSphere 5.0 problem around SvMotion / vDS / HA. I wrote about this problem various times and would like to refer to that for more details. What I want to point out here though is that the KB article now has a script attached which will help preventing problems until a full fixed is released. This script is basically the script that William Lam wrote, but it has been fully tested and vetted by VMware. For those running vSphere 5.0 and using SvMotion on VMs attached to distributed switches I urge you to use the script. I expect that the PowerCLI version will also be attached soon.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2013639

KB article about SvMotion / VDS / HA problem republished with script to mitigate!” originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Available now: vSphere 5 Clustering Deepdive. (paper | e-book)

Permanent link to this article: http://www.startswithv.com/2012/05/16/kb-article-about-svmotion-vds-ha-problem-republished-with-script-to-mitigate/

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