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L0cayta
Contributor
Contributor

iSCSI - MPIO - Unused adapters

Hi there.

I have configured a new vSwtich on my vmserver to handle iSCSI traffic. within the vSwitch i have 4 VM kernels each with thier own active NIC and IP on the iSCSI network.

I have mounted my new vm datastore using Dell's MEM plugin and this works great.

Within my iSCSI initiator properties, taking a closer look at the VMKernel Port bindings i can see that only 2 of the NIC's are currently  in use and active. The other 2 NIC's Path status is 'Not Used'.

This is the same when looking at the properties of my iSCSI vm datastore. The Paths shown are my two Active NIC's with the correct status of 'Active (I/O)', but the other 2 NIC's are not being used?

I'm not sure if vSphere is able to use 4 active NIC's for this or not? Are the other 2 NIC's used as standby automatically or do i need to select them as standy NIC's within the iSCSI vSwitch?

Thanks,

J.

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14 Replies
ajayn
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

I am also facing the same issue.  Please let me know if you were able to find any solution.

-Ajay

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Cooldude09
Commander
Commander

wht is the policy set for multipathing?

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ajayn
Contributor
Contributor

Round robin

-Ajay

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Cooldude09
Commander
Commander

all 4 nics connected to same physical swicth?

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ajayn
Contributor
Contributor

No.

two NICs connected through One switch(subnet 1) and another two nics connected to another switch (subnet 2).

-Ajay

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rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

ajayn wrote:

two NICs connected through One switch(subnet 1) and another two nics connected to another switch (subnet 2).

Which are the two active paths? Are they on the same vSwitch and subnet or different?

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ajayn
Contributor
Contributor

Active paths are showing on the same subnet.  (I have 3 ESXi 5.0 hosts and for all of them only one subnet is showing as the active path.)

Here is the screenshot how it is configured.  I have mapped eacch vmkernel port to appropriate active NIC

iSCSI-vSwitch2.jpg VMkernel-PortBindings.jpg

-Ajay

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rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

What do you see on the Dynamic and Static discovery tabs? Are the iSCSI SAN visible on both subnets?

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ajayn
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, iSCSI SAN is visible on the both the subnets.  All the 4 targets displayed.

DynDiscovery.jpg

StaticDiscovery.jpg

-Ajay

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rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

ajayn wrote:

Yes, iSCSI SAN is visible on the both the subnets.  All the 4 targets displayed.

This looks good. You are sure the SAN is configured correctly and also supports active-active?

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ajayn
Contributor
Contributor

Using Dell PV MD3600i- and configured by the book (as per the deployment guide).  I guess it is Active/Passive SAN.  But following is a statement from Deployment guide:

The PowerVault MD3600i series storage array in a duplex configuration
supports two active/active asymmetric redundant controllers. Each controller
has two 10G Ethernet ports that support iSCSI. The bandwidth of the two
ports on the same controller can be aggregated to provide optimal
performance. A host can be configured to simultaneously use the bandwidth
of both the ports on a controller to access virtual disks owned by the
controller. The multi-path failover driver that Dell provides for the
PowerVault MD3600i series storage array can be used to configure the storage
array so that all ports are used for simultaneous I/O access. If the multi-path
driver detects multiple paths to the same virtual disk through the ports on the
same controller, it load-balances I/O access from the host across all ports on
the controller.
I am searching for the multi-path failover driver that Dell provides and see if that makes use of the both the subnets.
-Ajay
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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

MEM is only for Equallogic, not for PV.

I suppose that he has Eql.

By default MEM enable only two sessions. To have 4 use this command:

esxcli equallogic param set -n=MemberSessions -v=4

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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ajayn
Contributor
Contributor

It turns out to be the issue with how I arrange the NICs.   It works perfect for me when I group the NICs with same subnet into a vSwitch as below:

iSCSI-vSwitch.jpg

Now, I am able to see all the 4 VMKnics active and have total 8 paths to each datastore (4 active, 4 standby) and persistent even after reboots.

VMkernel-PortBindings1.jpg

-Ajay

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1000de
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

I have teh same issue, but putting the network adapters in the different switches doesn't resolve the issue 😞

any ideas?

Thanks!

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