Navisphere Express (AX4-5i) and VMWare ESX 3.5 preparation

In this post I will be documenting the steps I I took I prep our SAN and Virtual infrastructure prior to the creation of several VM's for a project.

Creating a Disk Pool

1. Log into your SAN URL in my case it was a Navisphere https://SAN-01
2. Click on Disk Pools (1) -->Select available drives (2) type of Raid configuration then
create Disk Pool.

Creating Virtual Disks

1. Log into https://SAN-01
   

2. Click on Virtual Disks (1) Create New Virtual Disk(2)

Click on the Disk Pool tab -->(1) Select a Disk pool with free space -->(2) Type in your Virtual Disk name -->(3) Choose virtual disk size -->(4)Optionally you can pick a Server to apply this Disk too -->(5) Select apply to complete

Presenting the Virtual disk to a VMware Blade Server
1. First click on Virtual Disks

2. Then select you disk you want to present to the Server

3. Click on "Assign Server"

4. Select only one Servers so you can present the VDisk to be formatted--> apply OK.

5. Once you have selected the Server to apply this virtual disk too, log into Virtual Center with your VM client --> select that Server (1) -->Go to the configuration tab and right
click the ISCSI software Adapter then choose “Rescan”.Once this is completed
you should see the drive appear below and you are now able to add the drive and
format it.

6. Select the Server you assigned the virtual disk too -->Once you can see your newly presented virtual disk -->select Configuration tab of that Server-->Under hardware click Storage -->Then proceed by clicking “Add storage” on the upper right hand corner

7. Once the new windows pops up select “Disk/Lun” --> click next choose the virtual disk you just presented -->Click next twice -->Give it the same name as it appears when you log into https://SAN-01 (Navisphere )

8. When prompted to choose a block size, choose the maximum file size of the drive for example if the drive is formatted for 1 TB choose a block size of 1024 GB, if its formatted for 2 TB choose 2048 GB and so forth --> Select finish and you are done.

Now you can log back into https://SAN-01

(Navisphere ) and assign the Virtual Disk to the remaining Servers that needs to access it.