HOWTO: Create a LUN on NetApp Filer for VMware

To leverage enterprise features of VMware such as DRS, vMotion and HA, shared storage must be allocated to all ESX server on the network. The process of creating and allocating a LUN on NETAPP is documented below.

Create Flexible Volume :

Match up name with VMware : I normally try to name the volume the same as my proposed VMFS name.  In almost all situations, the VMFS will be the only thing on the particular volume.

For VMFS Volumes, I don’t normally recommend array based snapshots.   It doesn’t seem practical to think that you would roll back an entire volume consisting of multiple Virtual Machines.

 Configure QTree :

Add New LUN :

Create Initiator Group : Initiator group will be used to permission hosts to LUNs on the Filer.

 

Map LUN to Initiator Group :

Select VMware initiator Group :

 

Be sure to create unique LUN numbers when assigning multiple LUNs to the VMware hosts.

Once you have created the LUNs and set permissions to the ESX hosts, go back and RESCAN the HBAs.  You should see your new LUN ready to be formatted.