V1.0
June 2010
Revision History
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Table of Contents
vCenter Integrated Storage Manager Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Installation Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Recommended Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Software Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Application and vCenter Server Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Uninstalling the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
ESX Host SAN Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
ESX Host Configuration Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Configuring Storage Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Datastore to LUN View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Storage Array Event Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Application Server Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Common Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Maximizing Client Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Preventing Slow Script Warning Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Manually Unregistering the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
vCenter Integrated Storage The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in is a VMware vCenter 4.0 plug-in that provides
Manager Overview integrated management of LSI storage systems within vCenter. The plug-in will allow
the vCenter administrator to automatically configure ESX hosts to LSI storage systems,
create, map, delete storage volumes from the LSI storage system to the ESX host, and
view the vCenter datastores to LSI storage system volumes. The plug-in uses a separate
application server to facilitate the interface between the vSphere Client and the LSI
storage system based on the authenticated logged-in user.
NOTE: The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in requires that a vCenter Server be installed
within the environment. The plug-in will not function in a vSphere Client and ESX
host-only configuration.
Installation Requirements The following requirements must be met in order to install and use the LSI Storage
vCenter Plug-in.
LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in requirements:
VMware vCenter 4.0 server (installed)
Windows 2003, 2003 R2, 2008, or 2008 R2 server (either 32-bit or 64-bit) acting as
the application server
LSI storage system with VMware-certified firmware
In addition, system names and IP addresses of vCenter and LSI storage systems are
required during installation. Use Table 1 as a template to document the system names
and IP addresses of the equipment to be used during the installation process.
Recommended Configurations The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in uses SMI-S to communicate with the storage systems
that will be managed within the vSphere infrastructure. Due to the nature of the SMI-S
protocol, numerous procedure calls must be made to obtain and send changes to the
storage system, which require large amounts of data to be passed between the storage
systems, application server and vSphere Client. For this reason, it is recommended that
you limit the size of the storage systems and number of objects to be managed. The
following are the recommended maximums for this release of the plug-in. The number
of systems being managed and the number of volumes and physical disks on each
system will determine the overall performance of the plug-in.
NOTE: The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in performance is impacted by the CPU
performance of the vSphere client system and is a singled-threaded process. The higher
the megahertz (MHz) of the CPU, the better the performance of the plug-in will be
realized.
Software Installation Obtain the correct version of the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in for your environment (x86
or x64) from the following link: x86 link or x64 link. The file should be named
SMIA-vCenter-WS32-10.65.30.xx for the Windows 32-bit version or
SMIA-vCenter-WSX64-10.65.30.xx for the Windows 64-bit version. The file
should be copied to the application server.
NOTE: The application server must be a separate Windows 2003 or 2008 server that will
be dedicated to the vCenter Integrated Storage Manager. This system can be configured
as a virtual machine within the environment, which is the recommended method.
Once the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in software has been downloaded, run the package
on the application server to launch the installation wizard. The installation wizard will
install a Jetty application server, SMI-S provider, and register the plug-in within the
vCenter server. Note that the details of the equipment in the environment, such as IP
addresses and DNS names, must be supplied during the installation process. Table 1 on
page 6 may be used to help facilitate recording this information for the installation.
Installation steps by screen:
1. Read the introduction screen, and then click Next.
2. Read through the license agreement and if you accept the terms, select the
appropriate radio button, and click Next.
3. Select the local installation directory for the plug-in manager or click Next for the
default.
4. Review the installation details and click Install if the details are correct.
NOTE: During the installation process, several command line prompts will open and
close; this is normal behavior.
5. During the installation process, the wizard will pause and display a Notepad file that
must be edited as shown in Figure 2 on page 8. Click the "ArrayHosts" Notepad
window to edit the file with the IP addresses of the LSI storage systems that will be
managed from the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in. Add both IP addresses, on separate
lines, for each LSI storage system that will be managed. Select File >> Save and
then Exit to close the Notepad window and continue the installation process.
NOTE: Additional storage arrays may be added later via the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in
All Storage Arrays view.
NOTE: Any storage arrays that have been entered into this file must be manually
removed if the desired storage array will no longer be managed by the LSI Storage
vCenter Plug-in (The "Remove Storage Array" procedure will not modify this file and
upon restart of the CIMOM, the storage arrays listed will be re-added to the CIMOM). The
file is located on the application server C:\lsi\ArrayHosts.txt.
NOTE: To verify successful installation of the application server, run services.msc and
verify that the cimserver service has been installed and has started along with the
Jetty6-Service service. This is the Pegasus CIMOM that is used to communicate with the
storage systems. Also note that once the Application Server has been rebooted, the
name of the CIMOM service will change to "Pegasus CIM Object Manager."
Application and vCenter Server Once the application server has been installed, verify the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-In
Configuration has been successfully registered with the vCenter server. Open a vSphere Client to the
vCenter Server and select Plug-ins >> Manage Plug-ins. You should see the LSI
Storage vCenter Plug-In listed as Enabled. If it is listed as disabled with an error
message stating that it cannot communicate with the application server, verify that the
port number defined for the Jetty server is enabled to pass through any firewalls that
may be in use. The default Jetty TCP port number is 8443.
After the application server and vCenter server have been configured, you should now
see the LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in icon on the home page of the vSphere Client under
the "Solution and Application" section as shown in Figure 3.
Configuring Storage Administrator By default, any defined vCenter user ID will have read-only rights to LSI storage
Role systems. This means that any user will be able to view the storage system configuration
but will not be able to make any changes, including the vCenter Administrator user ID.
To authorize user IDs to manage the storage system, you must define a new role in
vCenter. Select vSphere Client Home >> Roles to define a new role.
Steps for defining a new role:
1. Click Add Role from Home >> Administration >> Roles >> vCenter server
screen.
2. Enter Storage Administrator for the name of the new Role.
3. Select the permissions that a member of this role only will need. If the vCenter
Administrator ID will be added to this role, it is recommended that you select All
Privileges for this role.
4. Click OK to add the new role.
NOTE: The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in compares the user ID to check if it is a member
of the storage administrator role only. The plug-in does not check if the user ID is a
member of a group ID that is assigned the storage administrator role; therefore, each
user ID that requires read-write permission to the storage systems must explicitly have
the storage administrator role assigned to that user ID.
SSL Certificate Management Once the storage administrator role has been defined and the appropriate user IDs
have been configured with the role, some final installation tasks might need to be
performed. The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in uses SSL to secure communications
between the vSphere Client and application server. For this reason, the first time a
procedure is called using the plug-in, you will receive a SSL certificate warning message
as shown in Figure 6 on page 12. The application server will generate a new SSL
certificate during the installation process and this certificate should then be installed
using the following method:
1. From the vSphere Client, select a resource element, such as an ESX host, VM, or
resource pool, and select the Datastore tab. This action generates a security alert,
which allows the user to install the new SSL certificate.
Enhanced IE Security If the vSphere client system has Microsoft’s Enhanced IE Security installed, the warning
message shown in Figure 7 on page 13 is presented to the user. Click the Add button to
configure a trust relationship with the application server.
Uninstalling the LSI Storage vCenter The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in may be uninstalled using the supplied uninstaller
Plug-in located on the Application Server C:\Program Files\LSI Storage vCenter
Plug-In\Uninstall LSI Storage vCenter Plug-In\Uninstall LSI
Storage vCenter Plug-In.exe or from the application server run Add/Remove
Programs (Programs and Features on Windows 2008) and select the LSI Storage
vCenter Plug-In package to uninstall the plug-in and SMI-S provider packages.
LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in allows for integrated management of LSI storage
Features systems using the following features. These will be detailed in the following sections.
ESX host storage configuration wizard
Storage system volume management
Datastore to LUN detail view
Storage system event log view
ESX Host SAN Configuration This plug-in allows for an ESX host to be automatically configured to use an LSI storage
system by detecting the installed host bus adapters (HBAs) within the ESX host and
configuring new hosts on the storage system with the Worldwide Names (WWNs) of
the HBAs from the ESX host. The default ESX multipathing mode for LSI Storage
Systems is Most Recently Used (MRU). To ensure optimum performance for the ESX
host with more than two HBAs, the ESX host should be configured to use the storage
system in pairs of HBAs. This method allows for the maximum I/O throughput from the
ESX host to the storage system. Using this method requires proper SAN configuration
and balancing of LUNs between hosts/host groups. Figure 8 shows a properly
configured two-HBA port ESX host SAN configuration using two fabric switches and a
dual-controller storage system.
This method works well to maintain the environment in case of a hardware failure;
however, MRU will only maintain one active path for each HBA group. Therefore, if you
have an ESX host with four HBAs, only one will be active at a time. To achieve higher I/O
throughput from the ESX host to the storage system, it is recommended that you group
the HBAs in pairs and create virtual hosts for each pair of HBAs. This will allow for a fully
redundant configuration but will also allow for two of the HBAs to be active at the same
time versus a single HBA (see Figure 11). From the storage system, the second pair of
HBAs is defined as a separate host and volumes can then be mapped directly to the
new host or host group. This same methodology can be used to group additional HBAs
in the same manner. This does require additional management to balance the LUNs
between the hosts/host groups to fully use the Fibre Channel bandwidth between all
HBA groups. If this method will be used in the environment, the Automatic ESX host
configuration utility cannot determine which HBAs are configured to each zone in the
environment and the user will need to verify that a single HBA is connected to both
fabric zones for each HBA pair group.
NOTE: The intent of this configuration is to pair the HBAs so that no group of HBA ports
would be contained on a single HBA card (if dual port cards are being used).
ESX Host Configuration Wizard To use the Automatic Host Configuration utility, navigate to Hosts and Clusters within
the vSphere Client and select the ESX host to be configured; right-click the ESX host,
and select the Configure Host Mapping option from the pull-down menu (Figure 13
on page 18).
NOTE: To use multiple host groups as described, the storage array must have the
Storage Partitioning premium feature enabled.
Configuring Storage Arrays To use the plug-in to create or modify volumes on the storage system, click the LSI
Storage vCenter Plug-in icon from the Home screen under Solutions and Applications
(Figure 17 on page 22).
NOTE: Any action that will perform an action on the storage array prompts for a storage
array password. If the storage array password is not used, leave the field blank, and click
OK.
After a new volume group is created, new volumes may be created from the free
capacity within the volume group. To create a new volume within a volume group,
select the volume group to be configured and click the Create Volume link to launch
the Create Volume Wizard (Figure 23). From the wizard, you can enter the desired
capacity, volume name, and I/O characteristics of the volume. Click Finish to create the
volume.
NOTE: If your environment uses multiple groups of HBAs per ESX host, the new
volumes should be balanced across all hosts/host groups. Do not add all the volumes to
a single host/host group; no I/O balancing can occur in this case.
After the volumes have been mapped to the ESX host, the storage adapters on the ESX
host must be rescanned to detect the new storage volumes. This action is
accomplished from the Configuration tab in the Hosts and Clusters view, and click
Storage Adapters for the ESX host being configured (Figure 26 on page 30).
NOTE: It might be necessary to run the rescan twice to detect all of the new storage
volumes that have been mapped to the ESX host.
Datastore to LUN View After datastores are created on storage system volumes, use the Datastore tab to
understand the mapping of datastores to storage system volumes. The intent of this
view is to provide administrators with a quick status and view of the datastores and
their underlying storage volumes.
Use this view to identify the storage array where the datastore resides and the
associated storage array volume. You can view the health status of the volume, the
associated host/host group, RAID level, capacity and datastore free space. This view
also displays the details of the datastore, such as the extent, LUN number, and health
status.
The Datastore view (Figure 28) is context sensitive, so selecting a VM in the tree only
displays storage elements for the selected VM.
Storage Array Event Log The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in also provides the ability to view the Storage Array
Event Log for a specific Storage Array. The event log is accessed from the View Event
Log link under the Storage Array Summary screen. Although the event log output can
be somewhat cryptic and many events may have duplicate entries, the details are
critical in identifying storage system faults. Figure 29 shows the output of the Event
Log. This window provides filtering for critical or all events and allows you to see details
for the selected event. The Event Log will retrieve the most recent 100 events by
default, but additional events may be viewed by entering a larger number and clicking
Update.
NOTE: The Event Log may contain a large number of events and attempting to gather
all events may take an extremely long time due to the nature of SMI-S. We recommend
that you use the SANtricity Storage Manager to gather any support bundles or resolving
storage array hardware problems.
Troubleshooting
Application Server Logs Detailed entries from the application server are written to the Jetty service log that is
located on the Application Server C:\Program Files\LSI Storage vCenter
Plug-In\jetty\logs\jetty-service.log. This is the most helpful log for
determining issues between the application server and storage systems.
Common Errors The most common errors that have been encountered are:
Unable to communicate with application server
— Check firewall settings to ensure the Jetty TCP port is enabled.
— Verify the cimserver/Pegasus server service is started on the application server.
— Verify the Jetty6-Service is started on the application server.
Unable to create/delete objects
— Verify the current user ID has storage administrator role assigned explicitly.
Maximizing Client Performance The LSI Storage vCenter Plug-in is a client side intensive application and as such, it is
recommended to use a fast CPU client, with sufficient memory to avoid page swapping,
to run the vSphere Client from. The client is a single-threaded operation and will
perform best on higher MHz CPUs, but will not take advantage of multi-core CPUs.
Preventing Slow Script Warning Depending on the size of the storage environment being managed, some of the views
Messages may generate a slow script warning message and delay the processing of the view.
These warning messages may be suppressed by applying the following registry change
on the system the vSphere Client is being run from as detailed in
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175500 Knowledge Base article from Microsoft.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Styles
DWORD "MaxScriptStatements" set to 0xFFFFFFFF
Manually Unregistering the LSI Storage If the storage manager plug-in needs to be removed, the following procedure may be
vCenter Plug-in used if it is not possible to uninstall the plug-in from the application server.
1. Start a web browser and navigate to the IP address of the vCenter server with
/mob appended to the IP address (example: http://147.145.51.217/mob).
2. Click the content link to navigate to the available ServiceContent.
3. Click the ExtensionManager link to display a list of registered extensions
4. Click the UnregisterExtension link and enter the extension name to be
unregistered from the list of available extensions (example: LSI Storage vCenter
Plug-In).
5. Click the Invoke Method link to unregister the extension.
6. The vSphere Client must be restarted to reflect the changes.
Conclusions The vCenter plug-in allows administrators in small environments to have a single
management interface (vCenter) to manage all of their day-to-day storage needs along
with their VMware infrastructure. This alleviates the need for vCenter administrators to
learn another management tool and focus instead on the entire virtual infrastructure.
The LSI development team hopes you find this application useful and we request any
feedback you have that may help us improve our products in the future. Please send
your feedback to vcenter-support@lsi.com.
Thanks!
LSI Development Team