1. Introduction
Dell™ PowerVault™ NX1950 is a unified network storage solution that simultaneously stores
both file and application data while supporting a wide range of operating environments and
communication protocols, including the iSCSI standard. The PowerVault NX1950 can be
deployed as an integrated solution (Basic and High Availability configuration) packaged with a
Dell PowerVault MD3000 Storage Array or as a Gateway connecting directly to existing Dell|EMC
SAN.
This document provides instructions to setup an NX1950 Integrated Basic Configuration to
provide iSCSI storage for usage with VMware ESX Server software. The PowerVault NX1950
integrated basic storage solution consists of single-node configuration running Microsoft®
Windows® Unified Data Storage Server (WUDSS) 2003 operating system and is pre-configured
from Dell with a PowerVault MD3000 Storage Array. Note that Dell supports only NX1950
integrated basic configuration with VMware ESX Server software storage using only the iSCSI
protocol and not NFS. Dell does not support NX1950 integrated High Availability configuration
with VMware ESX Server running on target hosts.
The Microsoft iSCSI software target functionality included as part of WUDSS uses the Windows
TCP/IP network stack on NX1950 to provide block storage services to ESX server. The Microsoft
iSCSI software target creates storage devices as iSCSI virtual disks, which are files in the virtual
hard disk (VHD) format. These iSCSI virtual disks are assigned to specific iSCSI targets. Only the
iSCSI virtual disks assigned to an iSCSI target (exported to the iSCSI target) are available to the
iSCSI initiator running as part of VMware ESX server or inside a virtual machine. This storage
can be used by ESX server to create VMFS datastores or used directly by virtual machines as
block storage. This document covers NX1950 deployment instructions using the iSCSI initiator
within VMware ESX Server and not a virtual machine. For instructions on using an iSCSI initiator
inside a virtual machine, refer to your specific initiator and guest operating system documentation.
Dell Inc.
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