Comments on: How to get ESX MPIO working on StardWind iSCSI SAN http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724 My Die-Cast Collection & Interests Thu, 08 Jan 2026 15:35:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: admin http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724&cpage=1#comment-1009 admin Thu, 26 May 2011 07:26:08 +0000 http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724#comment-1009 Search MPIO Starwind in Google, I've seen it somewhere in a PDF, Starwind and ESX probably. Btw, I wouldn't use NIC Teaming if I were you, MPIO means no Teaming and still able to load-balance between the two paths or NICs. Anyway, Starwind was made FREE last week! That's a great news for many, I mean probably millions who are looking for a software iSCSI SAN besides Microsoft iSCSI Target or Linux based ones. Search MPIO Starwind in Google, I’ve seen it somewhere in a PDF, Starwind and ESX probably.

Btw, I wouldn’t use NIC Teaming if I were you, MPIO means no Teaming and still able to load-balance between the two paths or NICs.

Anyway, Starwind was made FREE last week! That’s a great news for many, I mean probably millions who are looking for a software iSCSI SAN besides Microsoft iSCSI Target or Linux based ones.

]]> By: Hussain http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724&cpage=1#comment-1006 Hussain Thu, 26 May 2011 06:55:55 +0000 http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724#comment-1006 Hello, I'm in the same boat as yours:) I have HP DL 380 running Windows 2003 SP1 plain without any further updates. I configured hp Teaming on it to get 2 Gbps NICs. Then, I installed Starwind on it and present it the target LUN to the ESX 4.1 servers that running on Dell 2850. I then, configured iSCSI Mutipathing on the ESX with Jumbo Frame where each vSwitch1 have two outbound adapters, after that I have override the vSwitch nic teaming to split each iSCSI portgroup to have direct vmnic and those iSCSI kernels configured with Jumbo Frame as well. I ended up seeing two paths from one StarWind iSCSI Target and then I changed the iSCSI LUN to be a Round Robin. Here's a Disk Benchmarking on one VM running on the StarWind iSCSI LUN http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/starwind-f5/performance-with-esx-mutipathing-okay-t2456.html Anton suggested to configure the MPIO where I don't see any clean document to do that between StarWind running on Windows and VMware ESX. Any idea? Hello,

I’m in the same boat as yours:) I have HP DL 380 running Windows 2003 SP1 plain without any further updates.

I configured hp Teaming on it to get 2 Gbps NICs. Then, I installed Starwind on it and present it the target LUN to the ESX 4.1 servers that running on Dell 2850.

I then, configured iSCSI Mutipathing on the ESX with Jumbo Frame where each vSwitch1 have two outbound adapters, after that I have override the vSwitch nic teaming to split each iSCSI portgroup to have direct vmnic and those iSCSI kernels configured with Jumbo Frame as well.

I ended up seeing two paths from one StarWind iSCSI Target and then I changed the iSCSI LUN to be a Round Robin.

Here’s a Disk Benchmarking on one VM running on the StarWind iSCSI LUN http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/starwind-f5/performance-with-esx-mutipathing-okay-t2456.html

Anton suggested to configure the MPIO where I don’t see any clean document to do that between StarWind running on Windows and VMware ESX. Any idea?

]]> By: Anton Kolomyeytsev http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724&cpage=1#comment-921 Anton Kolomyeytsev Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:15:26 +0000 http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724#comment-921 Honestly speaking your idea is not that crazy as it could look from the very first look :) You can indeed have multiple SANs sticking around your data centre basement. They are working but lack some features (HA, replication, de-duplication etc). You can indeed use other SAN software and aggregate all these SANs into single HA device with replication and de-duplication. It's called *storage virtualization*. Easy to manage, ROI is huge. FYI. Anton Honestly speaking your idea is not that crazy as it could look from the very first look :) You can indeed have multiple SANs sticking around your data centre basement. They are working but lack some features (HA, replication, de-duplication etc). You can indeed use other SAN software and aggregate all these SANs into single HA device with replication and de-duplication. It’s called *storage virtualization*. Easy to manage, ROI is huge. FYI.

Anton

]]> By: admin http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724&cpage=1#comment-920 admin Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:28:07 +0000 http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724#comment-920 Hi Anton, Thanks for the Ferrari:)...btw, regarding the idea of an iSCSI SAN within another iSCSI SAN, this is exactly something like the movie Matrix or Inception, you will never know if you are within your own dream or not, something extraordinary popped up in my mind this morning when I woke up, so I came up with the following extreme case just for fun. First deploy a W2K8R2 VM on the default EQL VMFS, then install Microsoft iSCSI Target on top of it and put the SAN vNIC into the same iSCSI SAN as EQL (or the default iSCSI subnet), then create another W2K8R2 VM on this MS iSCSI VMFS and then install StarWind on top, also put the SAN vNIC into the same iSCSI subnet, then use the first W2K8R2 VM (which hosted on EQL) to connect to Starwind SAN again...you can continue to do as many iterations as you want, wow...you see how this is working? Ha…it's A LOOP! Hi Anton,

Thanks for the Ferrari:)…btw, regarding the idea of an iSCSI SAN within another iSCSI SAN, this is exactly something like the movie Matrix or Inception, you will never know if you are within your own dream or not, something extraordinary popped up in my mind this morning when I woke up, so I came up with the following extreme case just for fun.

First deploy a W2K8R2 VM on the default EQL VMFS, then install Microsoft iSCSI Target on top of it and put the SAN vNIC into the same iSCSI SAN as EQL (or the default iSCSI subnet), then create another W2K8R2 VM on this MS iSCSI VMFS and then install StarWind on top, also put the SAN vNIC into the same iSCSI subnet, then use the first W2K8R2 VM (which hosted on EQL) to connect to Starwind SAN again…you can continue to do as many iterations as you want, wow…you see how this is working? Ha…it’s A LOOP!

]]> By: Anton Kolomyeytsev http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724&cpage=1#comment-919 Anton Kolomyeytsev Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:56:20 +0000 http://www.modelcar.hk/?p=3724#comment-919 Well... It's too bad Ferrari does not give away Italia 458 free of charge b/c you plan to use it for non-production only :) Good job! Thank you! Anton Well… It’s too bad Ferrari does not give away Italia 458 free of charge b/c you plan to use it for non-production only :)

Good job!

Thank you!

Anton

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