vSphere vMSC (Metro Storage) Cluster with HP Left Hand Storage

Last week I had the opportunity to design a vMSC cluster with HP Lefthand storage for one of the customer.

I will post some resources in the series.

This post will focus on the design aspects of the solution

·         3 dedicated IP networks will be configured:

o   Storage network

o   VM network

o   vMotion network

·         As per the best practices Round Trip Time (RTT) latencies on storage network between sites should not exceed 2 ms RTT.

·         Storage network must support a minimum of 1Gbps throughput between sites.

·         Network connectivity between the Failover Manager (FOM) and the storage nodes should be at least 100mbps and RTT should not exceed 50ms RTT.

·         ESXi hosts in both data centers must have a private network on the same IP subnet and broadcast domains.

·         Any IP’s used on vm must be accessible from both sites.

·         Sites should be connected through a redundant storage network consisting of two physical links.

·         The VMware data stores for the vm’s running in the ESXi Cluster are provisioned on Network RAID 10 volumes.

·         The maximum nodes are supported on the HA cluster is 32 and should not exceed the number.

·         VMware vSphere Enterprise license needs to be used to gain from the Metro vMotion feature.