Multi pathing and iSCSI

[fixxervi6]

I see there still is no support for multi path IO using iSCSI HBA's, so my question is.

Would I be ahead putting 4 NIC's in a DL380 and some how have the VM's share those nics and use microsoft iSCSI initiator? I assume that ESX can not use those nics for multi path IO either and I will some how have to do that from within the VM itself.

[AustinPowers]

You can't do multipath with iSCSI exactly like FC, but you can easily accomplish your goal. Just team two of those physical NICs for iSCSI on the virtual switch that contains your VM port group. Configure the physical NICs for Link Status failover. Then all the VMs on that vSwitch will automatically reap the benefits from the physical NIC redundancy, without having to do anything internal in any VMs.

[Paul_Lalonde]

From a connectivity perspective, this does work. The only issue that remains is the nagging 1 to 1.5 minute timeout as the iSCSI initiator transitions to the standby NIC.

The original poster's idea of using the MS Initiator is an effective means of working around this problem.

The best solution, at this time, would be a combination of both methods: physical NIC redundancy on the ESX side, and Microsoft iSCSI within the VM for failover / MPIO.

Paul