Configuring and servicing storage systems

To avoid performance issues, you must ensure that your SAN-attached storage systems and switches are correctly configured to work efficiently with symmetric virtualization.

The system can manage a combination of internal and external storage and represents all the detected storage as MDisks. The management GUI can be used to configure both internally and externally attached storage. Data that is stored on external storage can also be migrated to internal storage, simplifying data and storage management. The system supports Fibre Channel and iSCSI-attached storage systems. Fibre Channel attached storage is automatically detected through the SAN fabric, but iSCSI storage must be manually added to the system for virtualization.

Virtualization provides many benefits over direct-attached or direct SAN-attached storage systems. However, virtualization is more susceptible to performance hot spots than direct-attached storage. Hot spots can cause I/O errors on your hosts and can potentially cause a loss of access to data.