VCAP-DCA Mock Lab Q1
October 29, 2010 
Sean Crookston 
The following is a mock lab question for the VCAP-DCA exam. I’ve pulled some things from the blueprint that I felt were good to study and tried turning them into an individual question that would aid in studying for the exam. Please provide your feedback and answers to the question in the comments section below. I will post my solution and approve comments with the solution within a few days time.
Question
You have received a new storage device that supports the iSCSI protocol. This device will be used to run several production virtual machines in your environment, which consists of a single cluster of 3 hosts with HA and DRS enabled. Setup your environment to support the use of this device. Ensure redundant paths for the storage are configured to minimize single points of failure.
Answer
Please provide your solutions, questions, etc in the comments section below.
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hi..
i assume that the initiators on the storage site are already configured.
i don’t have strong exeperience on iscsi on vmware, but i think u should at first configure a vmkernel port and then the iscsi initiator software, after that u should be able to add the LUN throught the standar “add storage” procedure..
One vmkernel port for each ESX server
as redundant path i will use round robin method (the storage should support it obviously)..
Create a vSwitch with two vmkernel ports
-iscsi_A – vmk2
-iscsi_B -vmk3
move 2nd nic to no unused
log in to vMA
vifptarget – s “esx1″
vicfg-vmknic -l
esxcli –server “esx1″ swiscsi nic add -n vmk2 -d vmhba33
esxcli –server “esx1″ swiscsi nic add -n vmk3 -d vmhba33
add the iSCSi storage and change PSP to RR
Step 1 Enable the sw isci initiator
Step 2 Setup a new vSwitch using 2 vmnics that are on seperate cards and different switches.
Step 3. Add two vkernel ports (vmk0 and vmk1) to the new vswitch.
Step 4 Setup one of the vnmics to each vmk portgroups on the new vswitch. One Active and the other one as not used
Step 5 using wither vma or sc run the following command to allow for multipathing
esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk0 -d vmhba34
esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk1 -d vmhba34
esxcli swiscsi nic list -d vmhba34
Rescan the hba and you will see two paths to each of your targets. You will also see two paths (vmk ports) when running esxtop for the hba
Thanks for the comments everyone. Good catch with the multipathing option, this is something I wasn’t even thinking about when I wrote the question up.
Another thing that would probably be a good idea to setup if supported by the storage is jumbo frames. This must be done for each vSwitch and the VMkernel NIC via the CLI.
This is a really good question Sean, I was going to ask what is the best isci virtual appliance to use. I just have access to fibre channel and nfs right now. I haven’t used iscsi myself in my last 6 years managing vmware.
If anyone knows Id greatly appreciate it!
I personally use the Celerra VSA from http://nickapedia.com/category/celerravsa/ . I work primarily with EMC storage so that is a majority of the reason for my choice. Openfiler will work just fine if you are just playing around. I myself was not very experienced at all with iSCSI until recently as well.
vifpinit
esxcfg-iscsi –swisscsi –list (tell you if software isci is enabled or not)
if it isnt enabled
esxcfg-iscsi –swiscsi –enabled (turns on software iscsi
esxcfg-vswitch –add iscsiswitch (add a new virtual switch)
esxcfg-vswitch –link=vmnic0 (add links to virtual switch)
esxcfg-vswitch –link=vmnic1 (add links to virtual swtch)
esxcfg-vswitch -m 9000 iscsiswitch
esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg=”storage” iscsiswitch
esxcfg-vmnic -a – -n -m 9000 storage
esxcfg-iscsi –static –add
esxcfg-rescan
If you are looking just for iSCSI, the Lefthand VSA isn’t bad. Pretty easy to setup.
Take a look at the QNAS TS-239 PRO II Turbo NAS, it supports both NFS and iSCSI simultaneously.
Iomega StorCenter is a NAS/iSCSI storage device which is on the VMware HCL.
ix2-200 and ix4-200d are the devices which are on the VMware HCL.