vSphere Storage - ESXi 5.1 - Documentation - VMware

Configuring iSCSI Adapters and 11
Storage
Before ESXi can work with a SAN, you must set up your iSCSI adapters and storage.
To do this, you must first observe certain basic requirements and then follow best practices for installing and
setting up hardware or software iSCSI adapters to access the SAN.
The following table lists the iSCSI adapters (vmhbas) that ESXi supports and indicates whether VMkernel
networking configuration is required.
Table 11-1. Supported iSCSI adapters
iSCSI Adapter (vmhba) Description VMkernel Networking
Software Uses standard NICs to connect your
host to a remote iSCSI target on the IP
network .
Independent Hardware Third-party adapter that offloads the
iSCSI and network processing and
management from your host.
Dependent Hardware Third-party adapter that depends on
VMware networking and iSCSI
configuration and management
interfaces.
Required
Not required
Required
After you set up the iSCSI adapters, you can create a datastore on iSCSI storage. For details on how to create
and manage datastores, see “Creating Datastores,” on page 159.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n “ESXi iSCSI SAN Requirements,” on page 78
n “ESXi iSCSI SAN Restrictions,” on page 78
n “Setting LUN Allocations for iSCSI,” on page 78
n “Network Configuration and Authentication,” on page 79
n “Setting Up Independent Hardware iSCSI Adapters,” on page 79
n “Configuring Dependent Hardware iSCSI Adapters,” on page 81
n “Configuring Software iSCSI Adapter,” on page 84
n “Modify General Properties for iSCSI Adapters,” on page 87
n “Setting Up iSCSI Network,” on page 87
n “Using Jumbo Frames with iSCSI,” on page 97
n “Configuring Discovery Addresses for iSCSI Adapters,” on page 99
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