SUSE Enterprise Storage on VMware ESXi #

The objective of this guide is to present a step-by-step guide on how to implement SUSE Enterprise Storage 6 as an iSCSI storage target for VMware ESXi. The settings in this guide reflect the parameters necessary to achieve listing in the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide for SUSE Enterprise Storage 5.5. While the certification is on the prior version, the underlying iSCSI technology is the same with version 6, and thus the information contained herein applies equally to either version. It is suggested that the document be read in its entirety, along with the supplemental appendix information before attempting the implementation process.

The deployment presented in this guide aligns with the architectural best practices of both SUSE and VMware.

Upon completion of the steps in this document, a working SUSE Enterprise Storage 6 cluster will be operational, as described in the SUSE Enterprise Storage Deployment Guide acting as a storage target VMware ESXi.

The solution outlined in this guide enables a customer to deploy SUSE Enterprise Storage as an iSCSI storage device for VMware ESXi.

SUSE Enterprise Storage

SUSE Enterprise Storage delivers value in the following ways:

VMware ESXi

VMware ESXi provides an Enterprise-Ready Virtualization infrastructure suite that is widely deployed.

Solution Value Propositions

Issue: Customer needs scalable, yet affordable storage for golden images, archive images, and software repositories. Solution: SUSE Enterprise Storage provides erasure-coded pools with exported iSCSI targets yielding low $/GB with adequate performance.

Issue: Customer needs storage with reasonable performance for virtual machines in addition to object storage. Solution: SUSE Enterprise Storage provides a single storage cluster that can service both the higher performance requirements of virtual machines and the lower performance requirements of Object Storage

The solution has the following criteria:

SUSE Enterprise Storage provides everything that VMware needs for storage in a scalable and certified manner. The solution utilizes multiple gateways and network paths in an active-active manner with the VMware multipath I/O stack in a round-robin configuration to ensure that performance scales while providing fault-tolerance.

When configuring the SUSE Enterprise Storage cluster for use as a virtual machine datastore target, the data protection scheme is an important consideration. There are two main options for data protection, each with advantages and disadvantages.

This deployment section should be seen as a supplement to available online documentation. Specifically, the SUSE Enterprise Storage 6 Deployment, Administration, and Tuning Guides and the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Administration Guide.

The following recommendations should be strongly considered:

This section outlines the steps required to deploy an environment similar in architecture to the tested environment.

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