EqualLogic PS6100 10.0.3 and ESX 7.0U2

Hello, 

 Officially, ESXi v7.x is not supported with Dell PS Series SANs.  Certification was not done by Dell. 

 None of the bundled VMware products for EQL are supported with ESXi v7.x.  

 The best practices TR can be found here. 

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/common/ps-series-vmware-vsphere-bp-tr1091_en-us.pdf

 They should be set at the Discovery Address of the ESXi nodes if you intend on later adding other non-EQL iSCSI SANs.   As other vendors may want to use different values. 

 The changes to the settings needs to be done before you discover any volumes on the SAN.  As, the settings at the time of discovery are stored in the DB record for each volume.  If you then change the default settings, those changes are not propagated into that DB.  In which case you have to remove the iSCSI discovery address, remove all static mapping entries and reboot the ESXi node.  Add the Discovery Address back in, verify settings and rescan the adapter. 

 Re: Round Robin yes. But make sure you create the claimrule on each node, to set the default to Round Robin AND change the IOs per path from 1000 to 3.   If, you leave it at default you will not get the full benefit of Round Robin,  The IOs per path is how many IOs go down one network path before switching to the next path. 

 One item that can greatly impact performance of the VM is not using Multiple Virtual SCSI adapters with VMs with multiple VMDKs or RDMs.   Each VM can have up to four (4) Virtual SCSI adapters. 

 For Exchange, SQL Sharepoint, or high end file servers with multiple VMDKs a single adapter can reduce IO performance.  Each adapter cab only talk to one VMDK/RDM at a time before going to the next.  By creating multiple adapters IOs can be done in parallel.  

 Regards, 

Don