My quick and dirty notes on how to setup iSCSI for ESX with Jumbo Frames.
Setup vSwitch
From the CLI:
esxcfg-vswitch –a vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch –m 9000 vSwitch2
Setup iSCSI VMKernel Ports
Setup 1 iSCSI port per NIC, each NIC requires it’s own IP.
From the CLI:
esxcfg-vswitch –A iSCSI1 vSwitch2
esxcfg-vmknic –a –i 10.10.5.173 –n 255.255.255.0 –m 9000 iSCSI1
Assign NICs
From the GUI:
Go to Configuration, Networking, click on Properties for vSwitch2. Click on the Network Adapters tab, click Add. Select the NICs for iSCSI and click Next. Keep the default Failover settings, click Next. Click Finish to close the Wizard.
Map VMKernel Ports to NICs
The objective here is to map 1 vmnic to each iSCSI port. If we have ports iSCSI1 & iSCSI2 and NICs vmnic2 & vmnic3 then we are going to map iSCSI1 to vmnic 2.
From the GUI:
Click on Properties for vSwitch2, select iSCSI1, click Edit.
Click the NIC Teaming tab, select Override vSwitch Failover Order.
Highlight vmnic3, click the Move Down button until it is under the Unused Adapters heading.
Click OK, give the window a moment to refresh the select iSCSI2 and repeat the process, but move vmnic2 to the Unused Adapters.
Enable iSCSI Software Initiator
From the GUI:
Click Configuration, Storage Adapters. Select the iSCSI software adapter and click Properties. Click the Configure button, select Enabled, click Ok.
Assign VMKernels to the iSCSI Software HBA
From the CLI:
esxcli swiscsi nic add –n vmk0 –d vmhba33 (repeat for each vmk#)
That’s all it take to get the networking setup.
You still need to point the ESX server at your SAN though…
From the GUI:
Click Configuration, Storage Adapters, iSCSI Software Adapter, click Properties. Click on the Dynamic Discovery tab, click Add.
Type the IP address of your SAN and click Ok then Close.