HP 3PAR has created a bit of a "damned of you do..." situation with regard to its Service Processor (which is available as a physical and/or Virtual Appliacne for VMware).
In directly conflicting documentation, HP states that the Service Processor should be placed on the local disks of an ESXi host, and that vSphere HA should be leveraged when possible. We all know that HA won't work with local disks, so where to go from here?
Of course, in the event we were lucky to have more than one, completely independent 3PAR SAN's, we could put the Service Processor for one on the other and vice-versa. Unfortunately, many installations will only have one 3PAR (the situation I face now) - and that may be the only viable form of block-level storage.
My thoughts are this:
- HP can't possibly expect users to revert to the "old fashioned" disk-based installs of ESX 3.X days, just to accommodate the needs of the 3PAR Service Processor.
- The 3PAR has complete device redundancy, therefore it should be one of the least likely points of failure in an environment.
- The Service Processor is not absolutely required for the presentation of block storage.
- The value of vSphere HA (and potentially FT as well, because the Service Processor is a 1 vCPU RHEL VM) far outweighs the need to run the Service Processor on local storage.
- One could, potentially, keep a copy of the Service Processor on portable storage and bring it up using VMware Workstation in an emergency.
I would love to get the opinions of other 3PAR users!
Thanks-
-J