For Multihost Clustering Using Clustered Virtual Disks, the LUN No Longer Requires a Single Path
search cancel

For Multihost Clustering Using Clustered Virtual Disks, the LUN No Longer Requires a Single Path

book

Article ID: 317921

calendar_today

Updated On:

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

The documentation indicates that for multihost clustering using clustered virtual disks, the LUN must have a single path. Is this still true for ESX Server 2.5 and later releases?

Environment

VMware ESX Server 2.5.x

Resolution

The clustering configuration table displayed at www.vmware.com/support/esx25/doc/admin/esx25admin_cluster_setup_esx.html#999125
indicates that for multihost clustering using clustered virtual disks, "The LUN must have a single path." This was true for ESX Server releases prior to 2.5, but it is no longer a requirement.

Here is the table from the Administration Guide with the corrected information. This table summarizes additional, important points for using Microsoft clustering software with ESX Server.

Area
Component
Single-Host Clustering
Multihost Clustering
Non-clustered disks
Virtual machine and swap (paging) file
Must be on local storage, not on a SAN
Must be a non-clustered disk
Non-clustered virtual disks (.vmdk)
Must reside on a public VMFS volume
Must use VMFS label notation
Virtual adapter must be set to shared mode = none
Non-clustered raw device (disk) mapping
Revision must be ESX Server 2.5 or higher
Must reside on a public VMFS volume
Must use VMFS label notation
Disk must be in persistent mode
DeviceType must be scsi-nonpassthru-rdm or
scsi-passthru-rdm
Non-clustered raw device (disk)
Use raw device mapping instead, if on ESX Server 2.5 or higher
Clustered
disks
Clustered virtual disks (.vmdk)
Must use VMFS label notation
Virtual adapter must be in shared mode = virtual
The LUN must host only one VMFS file system
The VMFS volume must be dedicated to the cluster
Must reside on public VMFS volume
Must have been created withvmkfstools -z
Must use the vmhba::

notation, not the VMFS label notation.

Virtual adapter must be set to shared mode = physical
Must reside on its own physical LUN
The LUN must host only one VMFS file system
The shared virtual disk must be the only file on this VMFS volume
The VMFS volume must be in shared mode
The VMFS volume must have only one physical extent
Clustered non-pass-through raw device mapping
Revision must be ESX Server 2.5 or higher
Must reside on a public VMFS volume
Must use VMFS label notation
Disk must be in persistent mode
DeviceType must be
scsi-nonpassthru-rdm
Virtual adapter must be set to shared mode = virtual
Not supported