Hello All!
I'm lost and really would like some advice from all you knowledgeable people out there. I have searched and read many articles, but still don't seem to understand.
We purchased a Synology NAS (has 4 gigabit NICs) to be our new datastore for files.
Right now, the network looks like this:
Dell Server with 2 NICs .. This server is currently the main production one and will be virtualized. Running Win2008R2, is the primary DC
Dell Server with 2 NICs that currently has ESXi 5.5u2 with a few active servers on it.
I want to keep the actual VM harddisk files running on the local datastore for performance reasons, but will move the user files to the NAS. There is another NAS offsite that will replicate this one.
The ultimate goal:
esxi server will have two datastores .. iscsi and local
local will hold vmdk, iscsi will hold backups of the vmdk and virtual disks
each vmdk will have a virtual disk which is stored on the iscsi in which those virtual disks will hold all user files associated with that VM.
ESXi 5.5u2 Server with dual gigabit NIC
NIC #1 goes to LAN (x.x.0.x)
NIC #2 goes to small switch (x.x.1.x)
vswitch0 has all the VM's and management
vswitch1 has iscsi vmkernal for the secondary NIC and set to address of x.x.1.x
Synology NAS with 4 gigabit NIC
NIC #1 goes to LAN (x.x.0.x)
NIC #2/3/4 gets LACP LAGG to small switch (x.x.1.x) ... or should this be MPIO instead of LAGG?
Figured would be best to completely segregate the iscsi traffic onto it's own switch .... but have been reading might be best to just connect to main switch and implement VLAN for iscsi traffic.
I don't know how to implement this in vSphere. I have everything connected like the above, but when I scan the iscsi software adapter for paths, it says "could not establish a network connection to the target" ... which I don't understand as I would think it would use vswitch1 on NIC2 to scan for the datastore which is on the same subnet.
But then I was just thinking .. Why not create a few LUN's on the NAS with 1 LUN specific for the VMDK backups which will be connected as a datastore in vsphere, then the other LUN's used for iscsi connections directly within Windows on the VM's.
Am I approaching this whole problem completely wrong?! Any idea's on how I can get this to work how I want it ... I am open to new, better, more efficient wants to implement this.
Thank you!!!!
Hudi
