Switchless 10GbE setup with 2 DSS and 3 ESX Hosts

[To-P]

Those drivers are included in the newest DSS V6 build 5626. This information can be found in the readme_5626.txt:

UPDATED:
- Updated drivers for Intel's Ethernet cards 10Gb/s (ixgbe - v3.3.9-NAPI)
- Updated drivers for Intel's Ethernet cards 1Gb/s (e1000e - v1.3.10a-NAPI, e1000 - v8.0.30-NAPI)

BR,
Tomek

[kokhong]

Would the same setup work for NFS with the NFS Failover module?

Presumably the DSS volumes should be populated with high rpm SAS rather than SATA drives to fully utilize the 10GbE bandwidth?

Would anyone be able to share any performance data for such a setup?

Thanks,
Kok-Hong

[Norman Walter]

Hey guys,

I'm currently setting up this 10GbE switchless Config in an test environment and triped over the following:

"For each interface which has enabled Virtual IP address it is required to have enabled Auxiliary connection." - this is an error message you get when you try to start Failover. The problem is: when you do not have a switch in the line, there is no physical link between the members of a Virtual IP Pool. I thought the link would be possible via the vSwitch in ESX, but it looks like that this isn't the case.

Anyway, it turned out the setup is relativly complicated to configure and to wire. Todd, you said you have a customer who is using this setup. Any chance to get a few more infos from him, e.g. are they also using VMware ESX? Do you think there's a chance to get in contact with them?

All the best and glad to hear from you guys.
Best,
Norman

[Norman Walter]

Oh no, reading helps...

Sorry Todd, the correct question is: when will the next release you recommended comes out?

But that's also wrong, taking a look at the webiste helps... I'll now test build 5794 and will be in touch again if necessary.

Best,
Norman

Have a nice weekend. And sorry for the noise.

[shechtl]

Hi Norman

I am testing NFS and iscsi failover with 10GB switchless with 3 esxi4 server and
also parallel 1GB Nics over a switch as bond (active-backup) and standby nic in esx vmkernel. The test seems to work. I changed today to new release and will test again.
In the moment I simulate everything with 1GB nics but everything worked, next week I will try to test with 10GB.

What is the status of your tests ?

If you have interest for a direct contact to share experience about this 10GB test and network diagram, you send send me a PM over this forum and I will contact you

[sale_u123]

Hi shechtl

We are very much interested in Your 10Gbps switchless configuration of iSCSI failover (2x DSS in iSCSI failover) and 3 esx4 servers.

Can You share with us Your network diagram of mentioned configuration?

[shechtl]

you can find a diagram at this link
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FR6FHVAQ

but its not completed and I did my test with only 2 x ESXi and only with 1GB nics
until i get my 10Gbit nics next week, but it should work also with 3 esx.

With the 10GB /1GB bond I will have some part of a nic failover. If someone will also verify, test and post his results here will be nice