3

I'm running the free version of ESXi and a Synology's iSCSI SAN for storage. Synology details setting up Round Robin load balancing in the final step of their guide to setting up MPIO here: https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/How_to_Use_iSCSI_Targets_on_VMware_ESXi_Server_with_Multipath_Support

But they appear to be using the vSphere Client which I cannot find anymore. I cannot find where to enable Round Robin in ESXi's web ui.

I would also prefer to avoid using a trial of vCenter Server to configure this as I'll be stuck if I need to reconfigure it after 60 days.

Unfortunately, LACP did not provide additional bandwidth for me like this post describes: Synology and vmware with 4 way MPIO slow iSCSI speeds

With a dynamic initiator, I'm seeing 12 connections in the Synology SAN manager (3 ifs on the Syno, 4 on the Hypervisor) but disk speeds are still capping out at 1gbps and there is no traffic going over the other 2 interfaces on the Syno.

(Edit) Network:

  • DS1520+ with 4 gigabit ethernet ports, 3 used for iSCSI
  • Dell Server with 5 gigabit ethernet ports, 4 used for iSCSI
  • 7 iSCSI connections directly to a GS724Tv4 switch on VLAN30
  • The first on each server is on VLAN40 and not used for iSCSI
  • EdgeRouter 4 is also connected to the switch for internet access using .1q for all VLANs on the switch.
charlespick
  • 63
  • 4

1 Answers1

2

Unfortunately, you cannot change MPIO settings in ESXi web ui directly. You can only add/remove static or dynamic targets. However, you can enable Round Robin using CLI by directly connecting to the ESXi host. Here's an article on this: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2000552. Otherwise, it's vSphere Web Client (vCenter). As far as I can tell, RR should help as by default you'll have only a single path active for IO which will be limiting the performance. However, take into the account your drives speed in Synology. It can also be a bottleneck (I doubt but it's possible).

Strepsils
  • 4,817
  • 9
  • 14
  • I'm sorry but that's not the case, you can do it via the web client - see this; https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-AE95818C-0782-429B-9526-DF12673A63C7.html#GUID-AE95818C-0782-429B-9526-DF12673A63C7 – Chopper3 Aug 21 '22 at 13:01
  • is there a way to get it to persist after reboots? – charlespick Aug 21 '22 at 16:33
  • @Chopper3 the article you mentioned describes the process of changing MPIO in vSphere Web Client which means vCenter. You cannot do this in ESXi host Web UI directly. – Strepsils Aug 21 '22 at 18:26
  • @charlespick I would expect the change to be persistent after reboot. Have you tried it and it reverts back to default? – Strepsils Aug 21 '22 at 18:32
  • @Strepsils Yeah in esxtop it's very clear that it's only using 1 interface after reboot. – charlespick Aug 21 '22 at 22:38
  • @Strepsils - If you really wanted you could just build a vCSA on the evaluation licence just for this and then delete it. – Chopper3 Aug 22 '22 at 16:23
  • @Chopper3 I don't want to be stuck if I need to reconfigure it later. After the evaluation runs out on the esxi host, you can't link a new vcenter server even if that vcenter is within it's evaluation period. – charlespick Aug 22 '22 at 21:06