Dell PowerVault MD3000i Configuration Guide for VMware ESX Server Software

The Dell™ PowerVault™ MD3000i storage solution consists of a standard or high-availability configuration. The standard model has a single controller with two 1GbE ports. It can be deployed to support up to 16 hosts non-redundantly. The high-availability model has dual controllers with two 1GbE ports per controller for a total of four 1GbE ports. The dual controller option can connect up to 16 fully redundant hosts. This document provides instructions to set up the MD3000i Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage solution for use with VMware® ESX Server™ software. The Dell PowerVault MD3000i iSCSI storage array contains four Ethernet ports through which the virtual disk (VD) can be accessed, affording both redundancy and availability of data. Provisioning of storage on servers in a virtual machine (VM) environment is a multiple-step process starting with definition of the server names for host access. The iSCSI connection is then established from the storage subsystem, and after detection and configuration is established as a two-way link with the associated ESX server(s), completes the iSCSI communication subsystem. The final step allocates the detected storage to the individual VMs, where all or part of the configured storage can be assigned to individual VMs.