Storage Heartbeat VMware

After discussing the Storage Heartbeat configuration on VMware, I would like to give some clarifications as the informations about this are somewhat scarce

The Storage Heartbeat goal is not as its name says, it is not used for ESX to monitor if the server still has access to the storage and is still alive.

This is configured by default in VMware in the cluster settings. The Storage Heartbeat is here to avoid any routing issue between the server and the Equallogic arrays in case of path issue and incorrect failover.

In case switch A fails, it can happen that VMware will not route correctly the path through the correct vmkernel/vmnic, the Storage Heartbeat is here to prevent this.

Here is a screenshot of the expected configuration in “vCenter -> Configuration -> Networking” panel :

It is important to note that :

-the Storage Heartbeat has to be the first VMkernel in the vSwitch (in the picture above vmk1 whereas iscsi are vmk2 and vmk3)

-the Storage Heartbeat need to have all the vmnics as active adapters (in exemple vmnic 2 and vmnic3), no standby or unassigned nic

-the Storage Heartbeat need an ip address on the same subnet as the Equallogic

-the Storage Heartbeat does not need and should not be associated with the iscsi initiator, no iscsi traffic on this VMkernel !