vSphere and multipathing

[jat]

Hi - I am testing Starwind (4.2.2) with ESX 4.0. I am trying to use ESX 4.0's multipathing i.e. I am using 2 pNICs for multipathing and want to know if the Starwind iSCSI target will/can be listed with 2 paths within ESX's storage adapters. Each pNIC should have an available path to the storage target. If this is possible, how would I do it?

[Robert (staff)]

Jat,

If you want your iSCSI targets to turn into an automatic-failover iSCSI targets luster, then please use the link below tto get additional information on setting this up:

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/images/ ... HA_ESX.pdf

The latest version 5 of StarWind can be downloaded from https://www.starwindsoftware.com/download-free-trial

Thanks.

[TomHelp4IT]

You can do normal ESX multipathing in Starwind without the HA cluster feature of Starwind 5, just follow the instructions for configuring Starwind to work with XEN and uncomment the <iScsiDiscoveryListInterfaces value="1"/>
line in the starwind.cfg file. This allows ESX to see all the possible paths to the iSCSI target on the server.

[Robert (staff)]

That's necessary for Xen server only, ESX and MS will allow using MPIO without editing the configuration file.

Thanks.

[TomHelp4IT]

MS iSCSI will let you do MPIO without needing that config entry but I found ESXi3.5 dynamic discovery wouldnt discover the paths properly unless I added it, and the static discovery wont work with the software initiator. ESXi4 may well be different as they've improved the iSCSI implementation a lot, I'll test it and let you know.

[TomHelp4IT]

I just tested it with ESXi4 and Starwind 5 HA, didnt need to change the config file - I was able to add the IP addresses of both NICs on both Starwind servers and ESXi4 showed a single datastore with 4 available paths as expected.

Uncommenting that line does allow ESXi4 to discover all the available paths to the Starwind server even if you only provide one of its IPs, not sure if that might be useful.

So yes Robert, I would agree that config change should only be required for Xen servers, but I would suggest trying it if experiencing problems with multipathing and ESXi3.5 or earlier.

[Robert (staff)]

Tom,

Thank you for your comment. I am sure it will be useful for the community members.

Thanks.