Synology NAS Storage System multi-Path connectivity VMware ESXi 6.5

Background introduction

Before the company used storage is nimble Storage, the above about 25T of space is a historical archive file server, usually not much access, and occupy space, in order to save space, we intend to get a low-end NAS storage, these less used servers are moved over. When you think about it, you buy a synology NAS device for the vendor. After a week, the beans start to configure.

Basic process

• Initialize NAS device, configure management Ip,email, initialize RAID, set ISCI target and LUN
• A separate VLAN is configured on the physical switch, the physical connection
• Vsphere Web Client configures VMKERNAL,ISCSI port bindings and so on
• Test

See the steps below

1. Initialize the NAS

Connect power, network cable, login http://find.synology.com/then follow the prompts to set

Installing DSM

And then you can get into the admin interface.

In the Storage Manager can initialize raid, this step will take a lot of time, here Beans 5 8T hard drive probably ran a night before the setup is complete.

Next you need to go to iSCSI Manger, where you set iSCSI target and LUNs

The interface is set up as shown below

It is worth mentioning that in the advanced settings of target, be sure to check the Allow multiple sessions from one or more ISCSI initiators, this is to configure MPIO multipath access later, or only a single access path will be generated by default

2. Physical switch configuration and connectivity

I set the network structure is very simple, is to find a normal HP 2920 switch, which opened a separate Vlan,esxi host and Nas above each connected to 2 lines up.

The NAS provides 4 NIC interfaces, LAN1 and LAN2 i as the iSCSI link, LAN4 as the management interface

A layer2 VLAN can be set directly on the switch

I've been looking for 2 1G ports on ESXi.

3. Web Client configuration multipath Port bindings

The beans are in vsphere 6.5, and the configuration needs to be set from the vsphere Web client.

To use MPIO, we need to configure two vmkernal, each vmkernal a standard virtual switch, bind a physical port on each virtual switch, and finally add our vmkernal on iSCSI Software adapter

First, create the vmkernal port.

Click New, follow the wizard prompts, give a name, set the IP address, create a new standard switch, bind the physical port, create a good effect as shown here, here I created 2 vmkernal on two new standard switches

The next step is to configure the iSCSI software Adapter

If there is no ready-made, you need to create a new one. If you have previously had additional storage for iSCSI connections, you can continue to configure new connections with the same iSCSI software Adapter

Add the target IP, note that he automatically inherits the authentication setting of the parent class by default, and if the previous iSCSI storage set up CHAP authentication, the same configuration is automatically done by default, and can be canceled separately if not required.

Port bindings inside, add the 2 vmkernal we created earlier.

Then re-scan the storage Adapter, you should be able to automatically detect the Target,device and path.
You can see that I've successfully detected multiple paths here.

Finally, you need to set the rules for the multipath PSP

To put it simply, VMware's PSA architecture is dedicated to the multi-path configuration of storage. The basic function of the PSA is to discover the physical path and assign the corresponding failover and load balance rules to the physical path. PSA inside the system comes with a plugin called NMP, a third party called MMP. NMP also has spat and PSP composition. The spat is mostly used for multipath fail over, while the PSP is responsible for load balance. Some vendors, such as Nimble, will provide their own plug-ins, after installing the corresponding VIB can use nimble own PSP rules, but Synology does not provide ISCSCI plug-in, so we can use VMware's own PSP.

Select a storage device at the bottom, there's a button. Edit Multipath

Modify PSP for Round Robin (polling)

Finally, test if it works.

Create a new datastore,storage on the NAS's LUN vomtion migrate a virtual machine go in and test everything OK

Esxtop look at Vmnic2 and vmnic3 have flow through

Success.

PS: A colleague asked me what the difference is between NIC teaming and Multipath.

Nic teaming is set on the network layer and is typically used on the production network or NFS. A typical setting is a standard virtual machine that is bound to many port groups (VLANs) and then exports to bind multiple physical network cards. The corresponding aggregation link also needs to be configured on the physical switch to which it is connected. However, note that the standard virtual switch does not support LACP.

Multipath (MPIO) is at the software level, managed by the VMware PSA Framework to manage load balancing and failover. A typical setup is a virtual switch with multiple vmkernal, each bound to a unique physical port on each virtual switch. A normal Access/untag port can be set on the physical switch.

Synology NAS Storage System multi-Path connectivity VMware ESXi 6.5