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76dragon
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

ISCSI software initiator and muliple switches to provide redundant paths

I attended a web based webinar last week and watched a presentation about NFS and ISCSI which was very good, something that was touched on after a question prompted by one of the attendees was that with software ISCSI initiator configured to use a Dual port NIC with teaming set up could not have 1 Ethernet cable going to 1 switch and another cable from the other port going to a second switch to provide redundant paths, my understanding is this is only possible with hardware ISCSI HBA

Can anyone explain why this is the case ?

Thanks

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ilatimer
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

You can absolutly do that, but you need to follow the recommended configurations outlined by VMware in SAN Deployment Guide on page 196 and 197. Here is a link to the doc:

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_san_design_deploy.pdf

ilatimer

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BUGCHK
Commander
Commander

I do see redundant paths on ESX 3.5 using the iSCSI software initiator. I've entered both target ports for multipathing.

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76dragon
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks, your right... this seems to have been a limitation in 3.0 but fixed in 3.5.x and up.

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