Configuring Left-hand Networks ISCSI and VMware VSphere for

MPIO

Configuring Left-hand Networks and VMware VSphere for MPIO

The following is a example of how to team Two NICS for MPIO in Vsphere but you can
use up to eight . The max throughput per NIC is120mbs so in theory you should be able
to aggregate up to a Gigabyte of throughput This works particularly well with Left Hand
storage as they use a single portal(virtual IP) to service ISCSI connections

1: Log into Virtual center and select > Add Networking

2: Choose Connection Types >Vmkernel

3: Choose create Virtual switch (do not choose Adapter)

4: Click next and enter VMkernel-ISCSI-A as the Network Label
5: Enter your VMkernel ISCSI IP address and subnet mask and click finish
6: In the VI client you will now see a Virtual switch with One Vmkernel ISCSI port
You need to go to step 2: and repeat this process with a different IP address name the port
Vmkernel-ISCSI-B so you will Have Two Vmkernel ISCSI ports bound to the same
switch
7: You will now add the Network cards to the switch. Go to >properties >Network
apapters and select the two Adapters you have earmarked for ISCSI
8: Click next and leave the cards in the present order
9: You will now see the two card connected but not bound to ISCSI stack for the VI
Client
10: You now need to put the card in correct order for failover . Highlight >properties on
the virtual switch and then >ports and highlight Vmkernel-ISCSI-B >edit> and then
choose the NIC Teaming tab
11: You will presented with the screen below you now need to check the Override
Switch failover tab and move VMnic3 to the unused adapter category
12: Click finish and go back to the Vswitch properties screen and repeat the process
For VMkernel-ISCSI-A. In this instance you need to reverse the process to Nic failover
So Vmnic2 will be the unused adapter
13: You will now need to enable ISCSI for the switch so go to >Configuration >
Highlight the ISCSI s/w adapter got to general tab and click configure and check the
enabled box
14: You will now need to Bind the ISCSI initiator to the Vmkernel ISCSI ports
This needs to be done via the service console so Putty to the service console of the
VSphere host and su –
15: type esxcfg-vmknic to list vmk nics

16: You now need to make sure the NICs listed vmk1 and vmk0 are bound to the
Vmkernel port so type vmkiscsi-tool -V -a vmk1 vmhba33 for the first nic and press
return and vmkiscsi-tool -V -a vmk0 vmhba33 for the second nic
17: You will see vmk1 or vmk0 already bound if this was successful

18: Confirm both NICS are bound with the following command > esxcli swiscsi nic list -
d vmhba33 and you will see the following below if everything is ok
19: You now need to add the ISCSI target from the VI client so it will pick up the LUNS
And run a VMFS rescan20
20: Once the scan is finished if you view the configuration for the ISCSI adapter you will
see that the ISCSI Vsphere Initiator now has two active paths but only one path has active
I/O this is because the default Vsphere NMP is set to fixed we need to change this to
round robin so that it will create two active I/0 paths and therefore increase performance
and utilize the Lefthand MPIO
21: Highlight the devices tab and click manage paths. You will then screen the below
You need to change the path selection to Round Robin from Fixed and then you will see
Two paths with I/O. This needs to be done for every LUN and the following script can be
used from the service console if this needs to be applied to a large amount of LUNS

esxcli nmp device list | awk '/^naa/{print "esxcli nmp device setpolicy --device "$0" -
-psp VMW_PSP_RR" };'

This will create a list on cmds that you then cut and paste from the SSH shell to and they
will manually run when you press return.
22: Vmware NMP round robin has I/O limit per path of 1000 commands before it will
transmit data the next active I/O path. This can cause issues whereby smaller packets than
100 commands will always take the same path and we not see the true benefits of
active/actice MPIO

We need to change I/O limit on the path to one command to force this. If you run the
following command with the LUN identifier copied from the VI client you can see that
the I/O limit is 1000

esxcli --server esx2td nmp roundrobin getconfig -d

t10.F405E46494C4540077769497E447D276952705D24515B425

The t10.F405E46494C4540077769497E447D276952705D24515B425 is the LUN

identifier and this can be copied to the clipboard per LUN from the VI client
23: To set the I/O limit to 1 run the following command

esxcli --server esx2dt nmp roundrobin setconfig --device

t10.F405E46494C4540077769497E447D276952705D24515B425 --iops 1 --type iops
24: Run the command esxcli --server esx2td nmp roundrobin getconfig -d
t10.F405E46494C4540077769497E447D276952705D24515B425
You will now see the I/O limit is one
25: There is a known issue whereby whenever you reboot the host the IOPS value will
default to a value 1449662136.

The solution is edit the rc.local file (which basically is a script that runs at the end of
boot up) to set the limit IOPS limit on on all luns

Enter this command, the only variable you will need to change is the “naa.600” witch
pertains to the identifier on array

for i in `ls /vmfs/devices/disks/ | grep naa.600` ; do esxcli nmp roundrobin setconfig --

type “iops” --iops=1--device $i; done