In an earlier post I configured my Synology DS1513+ Storage server for iSCSI and enabled it for Multi-Pathing, in this post I will show you how to create and configure a vDS (vSphere Distributed Switch) for iSCSI use and how to enable Multipathing to use more than one network path to your storage (there by increasing throughput).
Using the vCenter client you can see that in the above screenshot that I have 4 Intel NIC ports on my hosts that aren’t currently assigned to a vswitch.
In earlier posts we have installed and configured vCenter 5.5 as well as assigning hosts to it, in this next post we are going to configure our iSCSI storage to allow us to later setup Multi-Pathing from our hosts to our storage.
In my home lab I am using a dedicated Synology DS1513+ for my storage, so let’s go set up the iSCSI LUNs on the Synology.
Log in to the Synology interface with your admin account
In the previous post we installed and configured access to vCenter 5.5, it’s great that we have vCenter installed but with no datacenter or Hosts configured we aren’t going to be doing too much with our new installation so what we need to do is add a new datacenter and a host to allow us to work with the vSphere suite.
Launch the Windows based vCenter Client
This post will detail all the steps required to install vCenter 5.5a on to a Windows 2012R2 guest machine, I should add that at the time of writing 2012R2 isn’t on the supported OS list and that there is an additional step that needs to be done to ensure that the installation succeeds first time.
You will need to get a copy of OCSetup.exe because for some insane reason Microsoft dropped the use of it in Windows 2012R2 (it’s present in 2012). As a side note you can also use a copy of the file from Windows 2008R2 if you don’t have 2012 available. Once you have a copy place it in the C:\Windows\System32 folder.
In the first post in this series we installed the Windows 2012 R2 Root Certificate Authority. This, the second in a series of posts details the configuration of the VMware specific Template and the distribution of the Root CA Certificate.
The following post, the first in series of posts, details the installation and configuration of a Windows 2012R2 Enterprise CA to be used with a VMware Infrastructure Home Lab.
It is assumed at this stage that you have a single host installed and are running a Windows Domain controller.
As this is a home lab I have chosen to install the CA on to my Domain Controller rather than a dedicated server but if your environment is capable of running a dedicated CA VM then please do so.
The installation can be carried out either using a PowerShell script or by using the Microsoft Wizard. I have only documented the PowerShell method here but you can use the Wizard if you want instead.
Use the PowerShell script below to install the CA and Web Enrolment roles.
|
Add-WindowsFeature ADCS-Cert-Authority, ADCS-Web-Enrollment |
As a precursor to installing vCenter 5.5 in my 2012R2 lab at home I needed to create the vCenter and VUM databases in SQL 2012 and make sure that everything was setup correctly before the vCenter installation.
To make things easier I used the SQL Scripts below to create two DBs (VC55 and VUMDB) as well as creating the vc_user account and password.
[code lang=”sql”]USE MASTER;
GO
CREATE DATABASE [VC55] ON PRIMARY(
NAME=’VC55′,
FILENAME=’D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\VC55.mdf’,
SIZE=5000KB,
FILEGROWTH=10%)
LOG ON
(NAME=’VC55_log’,
FILENAME=’E:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\VC55.ldf’,
SIZE=1000KB,
FILEGROWTH=10%)
COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
GO
[/code]
So with the release of ESXi 5.5 I decided to follow my previous instructions and upgrade my hosts using the esxcli commands.
1. Place the Host into Maintenance Mode and ensure that there are no running VM’s on the host.
2. Ensure you have SSH enabled
3. Make sure that the Outbound HTTP rule is enabled, either by using the console or via the command line later on (command line is esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient )
This is a follow on posting about my Condusiv V-Locity VM testing carried out back in July. 
I have carried out testing on the Synology DS1513+ NAS using both iSCSI and NFS.
ESXi HOST: Shuttle XPC SH67H3, 32GB RAM; 1x i7 3770 @ 3.4ghz with ESXi 5.1u1 (5.1.0 build 1021289)
Synology: DS1513+ running DSM 4.2
With the change to my Home Lab environment recently I decided to take a fresh look at my storage capabilities and came to the conclusion that whilst the home brew solution was nice I now wanted something a little more dedicated to my vSphere environment that would allow me to play with the likes of VAAI because although FreeNAS claims to be looking at implementing this in a future release but there are no current dates on the roadmap for this.
Having looked at the likes of Qnap and Synology I decided to go down the route of Synology for my new home lab storage, there were a couple of deciding factors in this which include the 4x1GB NICs and the nice web interface (so much nicer than the Iomega IX4 interface).
A couple of days spent looking over various blog\forum posts all seem to indicate that this was a good choice and when I discovered that both of my colleagues had gone down this route it made more sense to do the same.
It should be mentioned that the Synology is not a cheap unit with prices ranging from £620 – £700 per unit (excluding disks) so you have to make sure that you’re making the right decision before spending that much money.
In the end I decided to go for a Synology DS1513+ unit, this 5 bay device is expandable to a total of 15 disks with the additional purchase of the DX513 expansion unit so offers a lot of capacity if required.
