VMware has recently updated the kb article “ Using esxtop to identify storage performance issues
Details” (KB1008205).
The KB article provides information about how to use esxtop to determine the latency statistics across various devices. The article contain easy to follow, step-by-step instructions on how to setup ESXtop to monitor storage performance per HBA, LUN and virtual machine. It also list generic acceptable values to put your measured values in perspective. It’s a great article, bookmark it for future reference.
If you want to learn about threshold of certain metrics in ESXtop, please check out the ESXtop metric bible featured on Yellow-bricks.com.
ESXtop is a great tool to view and measure certain criteria in real time, but sometimes you want to collect metrics for later reference. If this is the case, the tool vscsiStats might be helpful. vscsiStats is a tool to profile your storage environment and collects info such as outstanding IO, seekdistance and many many more. Check out Duncan’s excellent article on how to use vscsiStats.
Because vscsiStats will collect data in a .csv file you can create diagrams, Gabe written an article how to convert the vscsiStats data into excel charts.
Lefthand SAN – Lessons learned
Disclaimer: This article contains references to the words master and slave. I recognize these as exclusionary words. The words are used in this article for consistency because it’s currently the words that appear in the software, in the UI, and in the log files. When the software is updated to remove the words, this article will be updated to be in alignment.
Please note that this article has been written in 2009. I do not know if Lefthand changed their solution. Please check with your HP representative for updates!
I recently had the opportunity to deliver a virtual infrastructure that uses HP Lefthand SAN solution. Setting up a Lefthand SAN is not that difficult, but there are some factors to take into consideration when planning and designing a Lefthand SAN properly. These are my lessons learned.
[Read more…] about Lefthand SAN – Lessons learned
Deploying Volumes with Lefthand (CLIQ)
Due to my extreme busy schedule I haven’t blogged for a while. Besides studying for VCDX and preparing for VMworld I’m also involved in a couple of projects. One project is designing and implementing a vSphere 4 virtual infrastructure. The VI will host an Exchange 2010 environment. Due to the size of my client’s environment, 192 TB is used for hosting mailboxes. These datastores will be available thru RDM, which means creating 192 1-TB volumes and assigning them to every ESX host in the cluster.
I’ve tried to use the Centralized Management Console, but it’s tedious and error prone work. Mind numbing repetitive exercises makes me ask really dumb questions on twitter such as where did SCSI id 7 go? <homer>D’oh!</homer>. So to protect myself from further bashing and being ridiculed I started to search for the Lefthand CLI to be able to automate the creation and assignment of volumes on a Lefthand SAN.
[Read more…] about Deploying Volumes with Lefthand (CLIQ)
Deploying Volumes with Lefthand CLIQ
Due to my extreme busy schedule I haven’t blogged for a while. Besides studying for VCDX and preparing for VMworld I’m also involved in a couple of projects. One project is designing and implementing a vSphere 4 virtual infrastructure. The VI will host an Exchange 2010 environment. Due to the size of my client’s environment, 192 TB is used for hosting mailboxes. These datastores will be available thru RDM, which means creating 192 1-TB volumes and assigning them to every ESX host in the cluster.
I’ve tried to use the Centralized Management Console, but it’s tedious and error prone work. Mind numbing repetitive exercises makes me ask really dumb questions on twitter such as where did SCSI id 7 go? <homer>D’oh!</homer>. So to protect myself from further bashing and being ridiculed I started to search for the Lefthand CLI to be able to automate the creation and assignment of volumes on a Lefthand SAN.
[Read more…] about Deploying Volumes with Lefthand CLIQ
My first lefthand ISCSI VI architecture
I’m currently reviewing a design of a new virtual infrastructure. The VI uses multiple 10GB links to connect to a very large HP Lefthand san. I’m more a Fibre Channel guy, but I believe that this solution will smoke most mid-range FC-sans. I cannot wait to deploy the VI on the SAN. But I need to get used to some differences between ISCSI and fibre channel configurations.
[Read more…] about My first lefthand ISCSI VI architecture