If the issue persists, end any vmware-vmrc.exe processes in the Windows Task Manager:
Below document ID:Â c03571575
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c03571575&lang=en&cc=us&taskId=101&prodSeriesId=3664763&prodTypeId=12169
A critical issue has been discovered to potentially occur on HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) 4400/6400/8400 and HP EVA P63x0/65×0 systems running controller software version XCS 11001000. The potential for this issue is only on systems running software version XCS 11001000 and that are using VAAI functionality enabled on VMware ESX 4.1/ESX 5.x hosts.
To ensure current and future systems will function as expected with VAAI enabled, XCS controller software version 11001000 is being retired and will be listed as Inactive in the HP controller software support matrix. Contact your HP Services representative for more information on the issue and to schedule an upgrade to the latest controller software that resolves this issue.
This issue affects HP EVA4400/6400/8400 and HP EVA P63x0/P65x0 arrays that are running XCS 11001000.
Contact your HP Services representative for more information on the issue and to schedule an upgrade to XCS version 11001100. The VAAI functionality must be immediately disabled until the controller software is upgraded to 11001100.
WORKAROUND
Disable VAAI functionality on all VMware hosts that access the HP EVA array until the controller software has been upgraded to XCS 11001100.
UPDATE 16-11-2012:
The XCS code be found -> https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductsList.do?category=NAS
HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family with VMware vSphere 4.0, 4.1 and 5.0Â Best practices
[Download]
Running VMware vSphere 4 on HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions
[Download]
Best Practices for deploying VMware and vSphere 4 with VMware High Availability and
Fault Tolerance on HP P4500 Multi-Site SAN cluster
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HP P4000 LeftHand Solutions with VMware vSphere Best Practices (incl. vSphere 5)
[Download]
3PAR Utility Storage with VMware vSphere
[Download]
HP P2000 Software Plug-in for VMware VAAI
[Download]
HP 3PAR Storage and VMware vSphere 5 best practices
[Download]
Alle LUN’s standaard op Round-Robin zetten:
esxcli storage nmp satp set --default-psp VMW_PSP_RR --satp VMW_SATP_ALUA
Op alle LUN’s welke op Round-Robin staan de IOP’s op 1 zetten:
for i in `esxcli storage nmp device list | grep naa.600` ;Â do esxcli storage nmp psp roundrobin deviceconfig set -t iops -I 1 -d $i; done
| HP Power Profile | Custom | Allows to enable custom Power settings specific for vSphere |
| HP Power Regulator | OS Control Mode | Hands over the Power Management to vSphere. The other options give this control to the server itself. |
| Redundant Power Supply Mode | High Efficiency Mode (Auto) | By default (Balanced Mode), the server uses all installed PSUâs. This might look like the most efficient use, but the more power is drawn from a PSU, the more efficient it operates. The less power you draw from a PSU, the more gets lost to keep the PSU working. Thus, it is best to use the minimum amount of PSUâs so they deliver the highest possible output. The remaining PSUâs are placed in standby. This settings does not affect redundancy as the standby PSUâs jump in as soon as an active one fails. By using the âAutoâ mode, the active PSUâs are chosen based on the serverâs serial number (odd or even number = odd or even PSU numbers). This makes sure that all power circuits in the racks are evenly used. |
| Minimum Processor Idle Power State | C3 State | Needed for vSphere Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS). Allows vSphere to halt unneeded cores. |
| DIMM Idle Power Saving Mode | Enabled | DIMMs can put themselves into Low Power mode when not used. This will save some power if not all memory is used on the host. |
| ASR Status | Disabled | ASR monitors an agent running in the Service Console. When this does not respond within 10 minutes, the host is rebooted. However, if the agent fails or the Service Console becomes sluggish (even though the VMâs are perfectly fine), ASR will detect this as a system hang and will reboot the server. Furthermore, in case of a PSOD, ASR will reboot the server as well. This reboot might cause a loss of some logfiles. |
| Automatic Power-On | Disabled | If set to enabled, the server will power-on as soon as AC Power is available. When set to disabled, power is restored to its previous state when AC Power is available. |
| Virtual Install Disk | Disabled | This Virtual Install Disk only contains drivers for Microsoft Windows Operating system. |
To determine if VAAI is enabled within ESX/ESXi:
Note: These options are enabled by default.
To determine if VAAI is enabled service console in ESX or the RCLI in ESXi, run the following commands and ensure that the value is 1:
# esxcfg-advcfg -g /DataMover/HardwareAcceleratedMove
# esxcfg-advcfg -g /DataMover/HardwareAcceleratedInit
# esxcfg-advcfg -g /VMFS3/HardwareAcceleratedLocking
Can I check the VAAI status from the command line?
To check VAAI status, run the command:
# esxcfg-scsidevs -l | egrep “Display Name:|VAAI Status:”
Question that are thrown to me are:
Is the EVA VAAI compliant?
The EVA will be “vStorage APIs for Array Integration” (in short VAAI) compliant. It is NOT compliant at the moment.
Will it be in the next firmware release. Probably NOT.
The next… Probably YES. So we will have to wait, but until then the EVA should be fast enough by it’s own.
More information when available.
Disk alignment is very important in every Operating system environment. But when you are using a SAN and also using VMware you should take disk alignement in account.
Above you see that the Guest OS (for example Windows) is not aligned with the VMFS and the VMFS is not aligned with the Array Blocks. Meaning that 1 I/O can result into 3 I/O’s on the storage device.
Now the VMFS has been aligned, but the Guest OS is still not. Now an I/O can result into 2 I/O’s on the storage device. Beter, but performance can still be improved.
Now all File Systems are aligned. On I/O results into 1 I/O, because all beginning of the blocks are at the same position.
Only Windows Vista, Windows 2008 and Windows XP has a trick to avoid this:
If you are using a SAN attached ESX environment, make  sure:
Disk.UseLunReset is set to 1 (default = 1)
Disk.UseDeviceReset is set to 0 (default = 1).
The reason to disable the Disk.UseDeviceReset param is because it does a complete SCSI bus reset. All SCSI reservations will be cleared, not for a a specific LUN but for the complete device (being the whole SAN controller).
This could disrupt your SAN fabric. I would suggest setting the ESX host in maintenance mode and reboot it afterwards.
Alternatively, you can also set this via the Service Console by issuing the following commands:
esxcfg-advcfg -s 1 /Disk/UseLunReset
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Disk/UseDeviceReset
service mgmt-vmware restart
Many applications are designed to issue large I/O requests for higher bandwidth. ESX/ESXi 3.5 and ESX/ESXi 4.x support increased limits for the maximum I/O request size passed to storage devices. These versions of ESX pass I/O requests as large as 32MB directly to the storage device. I/O requests larger than this are split into several, smaller-sized I/O requests.
Some storage devices, like the EVA, have been found to exhibit reduced performance when passed large I/O requests (above 128KB). As a fix for this, you must lower the maximum I/O size ESX allows before splitting I/O requests.
To reduce the size of I/O requests passed to the storage device using the VMware Infrastructure/ vSphere Client: