Best practices for using vSAN 6.5 iSCSI devices
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Best practices for using vSAN 6.5 iSCSI devices

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Article ID: 326666

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on best practices when hosting iSCSI targets from a vSAN 6.5 cluster.

Environment

VMware vSAN 6.5.x

Resolution

The iSCSI LUNs hosted on vSAN are essentially large empty virtual disk (vmdk) container objects that are managed and protected by the storage policy configuration. Which means properties of these objects can be modified live and in real time.

For instructions on configuring iSCSI as a service in your vSAN cluster see the Using the Virtual SAN iSCSI Target Service section in the Administering VMware Virtual SAN guide.
 

Key benefits

  • Preferred method for mapping vmdks to physical Oracle RAC deployments
  • Great for sharing vSAN resources with physical workloads.
  • Support for CHAP & Mutual CHAP authentication methods.
  • iSCSI target objects are protected by storage policy configuration.
  • Simplified storage management through the use of vCenter, vSAN API and PowerCLI

Limitations

  • Currently not supported for implementation for Microsoft clusters.
  • Currently not supported for use as a target for other vSphere hosts.
  • Currently not supported for use with third party hypervisors.
  • Currently not supported for use with virtual machines

Configuration maximums

  • Maximum 1024 LUNs per vSAN cluster
  • Maximum 128 targets per vSAN cluster
  • Maximum 256 LUNS per target
  • Maximum LUN size of 62TB
  • Maximum 128 iSCSI sessions per host.
  • Maximum 4096 iSCSI IO queue depth per host
  • Maximum 128 outstanding writes per LUN .
  • Maximum 256 outstanding IOs per LUN.
  • Maximum 64 client initiators per LUN

Supported Operating Systems

  • Windows 10, Windows 2016 , 2012 R2, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008
  • RHEL 7, RHEL 6, RHEL 5
  • SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 12, SLES 11 SP4/SP3/SP1
For a full list of configuration maximums for vSphere 6.5, see the vSphere 6.5 Configuration Maximums guide.


Additional Information

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