Jumbo Frames on your vSphere ESXi box

Continuing on from this https://sigtar.com/2010/02/04/vsphere-and-multipathing-iscsi/

you may want to implement jumbo frames to your iSCSI backend…

Enable jumbo frames on your iSCSI target and switches then complete the following on the ESXi hosts (iSCSI initiators)…

This to list your current switch details and port group names…

esxcfg-vswitch -l

The following to allow jumbo frames onto your vswtich (insert your vSwich in following)

esxcfg-vswtich -m 9000 vSwitch0

Then create your kernel port groups that you want to use for iscsi, my commands looked like this… (repeat for each iscsi kernel port you have) — note : DO NOT ADD ANY VMKERNEL(s) from the GUI, instead use the steps below

esxcfg-vswitch -A iSCSI vSwitch0

If you are using a tagged vlan you will also need to add the vlan tag to the above port group

esxcfg-vswitch -v 192 -p iSCSI vSwitch0

esxcfg-vmknic -a iSCSI -i 10.0.0.101 -n 255.255.0.0 -m 9000

To confirm you have set the MTU (frame size) correctely, run the following….

esxcfg-vmknic -l

you should see your iSCSI kernel ports with a MTU of 9000 all going well. Confirm connectivity using

vmkping –s 9000 10.0.0.10

Corporate Firewall – SSH and port 443 goodness

Things you’ll need; (basic instructions)
SSH – either Linux or Open SSH for windows (set this up first and ensure its working!). I have only used Linux, so i do not know the details of setting up a Open SSH box on windows (good luck).

Router with pinhole or port forwarding abilities. — forward your external 443 port to internal 22 on your SSH box

Putty.exe – use this to test your SSH connection locally (you should be able to connect on port 22 locally or 443 externally)

Your home IP – setup a dyndns account on one of the free services available on the web (either use your router if it has it or get a dyndns client that runs on your ssh box) — i use dyndns.org

Putty is the client side device that you will use when you are not local to your network. If you are connecting to your SSH box from external (i.e. at work) then you’ll need to configure a SSH connection profile to connect on port 443. If you have a proxy at work (which you will most probably have) you need to ensure you have filled out your proxy address and authentication details — select HTTP then enter your username / password. Then try to connect.

When you can successfully connect to your SSH box from work via 443 you can then create SSH tunnels. Under SSH on putty there is a tunnels option. This is where you can forward local ports to your remote ports… for example – 127.0.0.1:82 –> 192.168.0.10:3389. Then if you fire up RDC you can connect to your remote machine via 127.0.0.1:82

Simple? — if i haven’t made a specific part clear please ask any questions and i’ll try to make it easier to follow