Server Performance with iSCSI

To ensure optimal ESXi host performance, consider several factors.

Each server application must have access to its designated storage with the following conditions:

Because each application has different requirements, you can meet these goals by selecting an appropriate RAID group on the storage system.

To achieve performance goals, follow these guidelines:

Place each LUN on a RAID group that provides the necessary performance levels. Monitor the activities and resource use of other LUNS in the assigned RAID group. A high-performance RAID group that has too many applications doing I/O to it might not meet performance goals required by an application running on the ESXi host.
To achieve maximum throughput for all the applications on the host during the peak period, install enough network adapters or iSCSI hardware adapters. I/O spread across multiple ports provides faster throughput and less latency for each application.
To provide redundancy for software iSCSI, make sure that the initiator is connected to all network adapters used for iSCSI connectivity.
When allocating LUNs or RAID groups for ESXi systems, remember that multiple operating systems use and share that resource. The LUN performance required by the ESXi host might be much higher than when you use regular physical machines. For example, if you expect to run four I/O intensive applications, allocate four times the performance capacity for the ESXi LUNs.
When you use multiple ESXi systems with vCenter Server, the storage performance requirements increase.
The number of outstanding I/Os needed by applications running on an ESXi system must match the number of I/Os the SAN can handle.