Another good reason to take advantage of the install team is to get the SCSI switch configured as well.  Depending on the model Powerconnect it may have an "iscsi enable" command that will set the majority of the parameters for optimal iSCSI use.  I.e. stacked 6200 series switches.   You just have to create a new VLAN (i.e. VLAN 100) to assign all the iSCSI ports into.  Otherwise they stay on the "default" VLAN, VLAN1  which doesn't work well with Jumbo Frames.  Support gets allot of calls because of improperly configured switches.   Re: MEM module.  That would definitely be the best solution.  It sets the volume MPIO modes automatically.  If you don't then you have to go to each node and run a script to properly configure VMware Round Robin MPIO.   And when you add more Datastores you have to re-run the script.   MEM does that automatically.    VMware requires Enterprise or Enterprise+ licensing in order to support MPIO modules like MEM.  I also agree that two GbE adapters per ESX node for iSCSI will be enough.  Especially with ESX you hardly ever actually max out the interfaces.   Use the other ports to add redundancy to your ESX management port and for vMotion.   That's a common item missed, w/o a redundant vMotion VMkernel port you could have VMs stranded on a node.   Regards, 
Hi all, I'm new to the communities and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction on a SAN network question. We've just taken delivery of our first Equallogic PS4100 and will soon have an R620 with 2 quad port NIC cards and 2 * powerconnect switches. I've read all the best practice guides and the Equallogic configuration guide, so have a pretty good idea of how to set up a redundant SAN. The part I'm stuck on (and I know this may seem a  really basic question) is how to connect the workstations on the corporate LAN to the SAN? I understand the SAN should be isolated from the LAN traffic. We'll be using VMWare. From reading the Equallogic configuration guides, 4 NIC ports should be used to connect to each switch from one quad port card. Does that mean the other quad port card should be used to connect to the corporate LAN ? I think that's the way it should but not 100%. Hope the above makes sense and appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks! :)
Basic SAN Connection Question - Connecting to corporate LAN