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Discussion: vSphere 4.1 upgradeReported This is a featured thread

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aseniuk
vSphere 4.1 upgrade
Jul 22 2010, 4:23 PM EDT | Post edited: Jul 22 2010, 4:23 PM EDT
Hi there,

I am upgrading to 4.1 from 4.0 U1, and I am wondering if using hardware iscsi is better or equal to using the software iscsi solution. Here is some background we have 6 x R610 Servers (2 processors, 32GB ram and 4 x broadcom 5709 1GB iscsi nic) and we have a PS4000X. I have read during the initial setup in 4.0 that I should be using jumbo frames for maximum performance. During the setup of 4.1 the hardware hba's for the 5709 nics I found that it won't accept the jumbo frame configuration and doesn't mount the data stores.

Could we confirm this is correct and that the 5709 doesn't support hardware hba and jumbo frames?
Secondly can anyone tell me if the hardware hba at a MTU of 1500 will keep up to the software hba with a MTU of 9000?
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Keyword tags: 4.1 5709 ESX ESXi PS4000 R610
KongY@Dell
KongY@Dell
1. RE: vSphere 4.1 upgrade
Jul 22 2010, 9:47 PM EDT | Post edited: Jul 22 2010, 9:47 PM EDT
Hi @aseniuk,

To answer your 1st question, the 5709 doesn't support jumbo frames or IPv6 as a hardware iSCSI initiator. Please see the excerpt below from VMware's vSphere 4.1 Release Notes. As for your 2nd question, if you use the software iSCSI initiator, you should be able to put in place end-to-end jumbo frames. Use "vmkping -s 9000 <Group IP address of your EQL>" from you ESX host servers to validate that you have end-to-end jumbo frames.

Per the vSphere 4.1 release notes at http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_esx41_vc41_rel_notes.html under the "Known Issues" section:

The Known Issues section covers Functionality Caveats and provides a List of Known Issues.
Functionality Caveats

IPv6 Disabled by Default. IPv6 is disabled by default when installing ESX 4.1.

Hardware iSCSI. Broadcom Hardware iSCSI does not support Jumbo Frames or IPv6. Dependent hardware iSCSI does not support iSCSI access to the same LUN when a host uses dependent and independent hardware iSCSI adapters simultaneously.

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bwiechman
2. RE: vSphere 4.1 upgrade
Aug 20 2010, 10:59 AM EDT | Post edited: Aug 20 2010, 10:59 AM EDT
Do you have to enable something in the BIOS to for the 5709 to be properly detected as an hba? Do you find this valuable?    

kamp@eur.nl
3. RE: vSphere 4.1 upgrade
Thursday, 4:57 AM EDT | Post edited: Thursday, 4:57 AM EDT
KongY, Just ran into this thread with the obvious next question: Given this limitation (here on a bunch of M805's & R805's with PS4000E/PS5000E/PS5000XV's), which set up would be 'best'?
Should we use the 5709's as HBA's with offload and without jumbo-frames, or would the sw-iSCSI initiator with jumboframes and extra CPU-load be the way to go?

I can imagine the answer may depend on average CPU and / or storage array load, but I do hope you can point me in the right direction. Do you find this valuable?