When doing some research for a paper I am working on I noticed something. On the 29th of February the KB Article that explains some of the failure scenarios for a NetApp MetroCluster solution was updated and support for “ESXi 5.0” was added. I haven’t seen an update to the vMSC HCL yet, but I would guess that this would happen soon… or I would hope it does.
[edit: apparently the KB article was incorrect, ESXi 5.0 support was removed soon after this article was published….]
This has not been qualified yet. I corrected the KB to remove 5.0.
Hi,
is there a technical reason why 5.0 is not supported? Or is it just because of missing tests?
We use a NetApp Metro Cluster (Ontap 8) with vSphere 4.0 and we have never noticed the behaviour as described in the KB Article:
“After you perform a manual MetroCluster failover, the UUIDs of the mirrored LUNs are retained.”
Is this a current information?
Regards
Andi
mmh… the smiley should be ONTAP 8
Andi, there is a difference between vSphere 5 supporting vMSC as a configuration AND supporting a specific configuration. Each storage vendor that provides vMSC configuration on vSphere 5 is required to “qualify” the configuration and submit the test results to VMware through the “PVSP” (Partner Verified and Supported Product) program. When the qualification test results are reviewed and accepted by VMware, the storage vendor’s product will be posted on the HCL.
So, the bottom line is: If the Storage Vendor’s array is not listed on the HCL as qualified for vMSC, it is not supported. I hope this clarifies the process.
Storage arrays that were listed in KBs documenting Metro Cluster configuration support status on vSphere 4.x do not get automatically supported on vSphere 5. They must go through the above process to get listed.
FYI, if you check the HCL today for Metro Cluster storage on FC, iSCSI, and NFS NetApp MetroCluster is listed.