Squeezing Maximum Performance Out Of Your Iomega IX4-200D as a vSphere Storage Target

I’ve been using a few Iomega StorCenter IX4-200D’s as storage targets for vSphere 4 ESXi and have been a little disappointed at the performance.  This disappointment really only comes when VMs are booting, I’m using Storage VMotion, or consolidating snapshots.  For the price point, it’s still a great piece of equipment and I can honestly say that I’ve had 17+ active VMs running off the unit with no problem once the VMs are up and running.  Keep in mind this is a lab implementation and those VMs weren’t under heavy utilization.

I’ll keep this post updated with anything else I come up with or that is submitted in comments.

Edited 10/23/2011 – No longer recommending use of NFS as a vSphere target on this unit.

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Using the Iomega IX4-200D as a Storage Target for vSphere (ESX and ESXi) Lessons Learned

I’ve been using an Iomega IX4-200D as a storage target for vSphere and have to say that for the most part it works well.  I’ve used it both as an iSCSI target and as NFS storage.

You can and should expect it to suffer typical storage performance issues.  It runs on 4 hard drives, mine in a RAID 5 array which is not the most performant, but best in case of disk failure and who wants to lose VMs.  It’s still a limited set of spindles to work with and keeping that in mind will save you troubles down the road.

At one point, I had 17 VMs running on a single IX4-200D.

Still interested?  Keep reading…

Remove iSCSI Drive Lock From Iomega IX4 Series NAS and vSphere Without Rebooting Either

Is your Iomega NAS iSCSI drive locked by vSphere and you don’t want to reboot?  This works with vSphere 4.1 (using ESXi but should be the same for ESX versions), and an Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d (firmware 2.1.38.22294).  If you encounter issues with another version, please let me know.

I’ve had some trouble off and on with iSCSI on my Iomega IX4 series NAS.  The trouble exists around removing the iSCSI target from vSphere but not releasing the hold on the NAS typically requiring a reboot of both the NAS and the host to remove the lock.  As I don’t like taking my host(s) or NAS down, through a little experimentation, I’ve come up with the steps necessary to remove the target allowing for the editing or deleting of the iSCSI drive on the NAS.  While something is connected to it, the IX4 will not allow editing or deletion.  This also works for removing a single target drive while vSphere is still pointing to other targets on the NAS.

Let’s get to it!