White Paper

USING VMWARE VSPHERE WITH EMC VPLEX Best Practices Planning

Abstract This white paper describes EMC® VPLEX™ features and functionality relevant to VMware® vSphere. The best practices for configuring a VMware environment to optimally leverage EMC VPLEX are also presented. The paper also discusses methodologies to migrate an existing VMware deployment to the EMC VPLEX family. July 2011

Copyright © 2011 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided “as is.” EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. VMware, ESX, ESXi, vCenter, VMotion, and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number h7118.3

Using VMware vSphere with EMC VPLEX

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Table of Contents Executive summary.................................................................................................. 4 Audience ............................................................................................................................ 4

EMC VPLEX overview ................................................................................................ 5 EMC VPLEX architecture ...................................................................................................... 5 EMC VPLEX family ............................................................................................................... 6 EMC VPLEX clustering architecture...................................................................................... 7

Provisioning VPLEX storage to VMware environments ............................................... 9 EMC Virtual Storage Integrator and VPLEX .............................................................. 20 Connectivity considerations ................................................................................... 22 Multipathing and load balancing ........................................................................... 25 VMware ESX version 4.x and NMP..................................................................................... 25 VMware ESX version 4.x with PowerPath/VE ..................................................................... 27 PowerPath/VE features ................................................................................................. 28 PowerPath/VE management ......................................................................................... 29 Path Management feature of Virtual Storage Integrator..................................................... 29

Migrating existing VMware environments to VPLEX ................................................. 33 Nondisruptive migrations using storage vMotion .............................................................. 33 Migration using encapsulation of existing devices............................................................ 35

VMware deployments in a VPLEX Metro environment .............................................. 41 VPLEX witness .................................................................................................................. 42 VMware cluster configuration with VPLEX witness ............................................................ 44 VMware cluster configuration ....................................................................................... 44 VMware