Installing Dell Equallogic Multipathing Extension Module (MEM) in vSphere 5.1

Published by Christian Mohn · Read in about 2 min (417 words)

Dell offers a Multipathing Extension Module (MEM) for vSphere, and in this post I´ll highlight how to “manually” install it on a ESXi 5.1 host. I will not cover the network setup part of the equation, but rather go through the simple steps required to get the MEM installed on the hosts in question.

First of all, you need to download the MEM installation package. At the time of writing, the latest version is v1.1.2.292203, available from equallogic.com. One the archive file is aquired, unzip it and upload the dell-eql-mem-esx5-1.1.2.292203.zip file to a shared location available in your environment. For the example below, I have used a VMFS datastore that is available to all the hosts in this particular cluster.

Note: The host in question has already been put in maintenance mode, to make sure no VMs are actively using the storage paths while installing the module.

The VIB file, which resides inside the dell-eql-mem-esx5-1.1.2.292203.zip, file can be installed using several techniques; By using the vMA, vSphere Command-Line Interface (vSphere CLI), vSphere Update Manager or even by logging in to the hosts via a SSH connection, and in this case I opted for doing it through SSH.

The command required to install the MEM is as follows:

esxcli software vib install --depot /vmfs/volumes/vmfsvol/dell/dell-eql-mem-esx5-1.1.2.292203.zip

A completed installation looks like this:

login as: root
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Password:
The time and date of this login have been sent to the system logs.

VMware offers supported, powerful system administration tools. Please
see www.vmware.com/go/sysadmintools for details.

The ESXi Shell can be disabled by an administrative user. See the
vSphere Security documentation for more information.
~ # esxcli software vib install --depot /vmfs/volumes/vmfsvol/dell/dell-eql-mem-esx5-1.1.2.292203.zip
Installation Result
Message: Operation finished successfully.
Reboot Required: false
VIBs Installed: Dell_bootbank_dell-eql-host-connection-mgr_1.1.1-268843, Dell_bootbank_dell-eql-hostprofile_1.1.0-212190, Dell_bootbank_dell-eql-routed-psp_1.1.1-262227
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:
~ #

I then restart the hosts process, to make sure that the multipath module is activated.

~ # /etc/init.d/hostd restart
watchdog-hostd: Terminating watchdog process with PID 9592
hostd stopped.
hostd started.
~ #

Finally, a quick check to see if the new Equallogic namespace is available, and that it is gathering statistics, i.e. being used:

~ # esxcli equallogic stat summary
DeviceId VolumeName PathCount Reads Writes KBRead KBWritten
-------------------------------- ---------- --------- ----- ------ ------ ---------
6090A098E0DC5D9F71E6940292F8569C vmvolume 2 2573 30 20429 14
6090A098D06C5A31CEDE44CC17CBF14B test2t 2 651 30 13028 14
6090A098D06C4AF067EDD4C904C6A453 vmvolume3 2 642 30 10592 14
6090A098C08D5E928EE634938F42605B vmvolume1 2 1834 30 20023 14
~ #

Screenshots displaying the ESXi host path policy before:

and after installing the Dell Equallogic MEM:

Post last updated on January 2, 2024: Add author

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