Question : How to completely stop all IO on a MD3000 in a VMware environment

I have an MD3000 which uses a NX1950 as a front end to the ISCSI SAN.  The ISCSI SAN is what I use for the datastore in my vSphere 4 environment.  I have 3 VM Host servers that have an ISCSI connection to the MD3000.

I have to do a firmware update to the MD3000 which requires all IO to cease prior to me running the update.  How do I gracefully stop all IO to free up the MD3000 to do this update?  Can I just disable the NICs that run the ISCSI Initiator, or will that cause problems in VMWARE?  I have about 20 guest computers that use the MD3000 storage to host their VMDK files and I would rather not shut down all of the computers one by one.

Answer : How to completely stop all IO on a MD3000 in a VMware environment

I think you have no choice. As long as the md3000 data is being accessed by vms or other network devices, there will be IO.

I would recommend that you schedule downtime to bring your network offline during your SAN update.

Don't forget your good backup incase the firmware update goes belly up :)

Posted via EE Mobile