In order to configure multipathing for an iSCSI storage device we can configure software iSCSI port binding on an ESXi Host in order to load-balance between paths when all paths are present and to handle failures of a path at any point between the server and the storage. Without port binding, all iSCSI LUNs will … More Storage – Configure Software iSCSI port binding on an ESXi Host

In my lab environment I was looking to tag a local hard drive as SSD in order to configure and manage vSphere Flash Read Cache, this activity actually ticks two boxes in the VCAP5-DCA blueprint as in order to achieve this I was required to use the Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) related commands from the … More Storage – Identity and tag SSD and local devices on an ESXi Host

In an environment managed by a vCenter Server System four storage filters are provided by vSphere that determine the affect the action of the vCenter Server when scanning storage. These filters by default prevent all storage that is currently in use being found which I think we can agree is a good practice by default. However, … More VMware vSphere Storage Concepts – Part Three: vCenter Server Storage Filters

We have previously discussed the concept for the most common approach VMFS, now we will consider Raw Device Mapping (RDM), N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) and VMware Direct Path I/O concepts. Raw Device Mapping  This option for virtual machine hard disks allows for guest to directly utilise the provisioned LUN on the storage array. This may … More VMware vSphere Storage Concepts – Part Two: Raw Device Mapping, N-Port ID Virtualization and VMware Direct Path I/O