EMC PowerPath for vSphere

[Arkady]

Hello,

We are considering to use EMC PowerPath and I would like to know opnion about this product.

Any pros and cons? Would like to hear from somwebody who actually use or considered to use it.

Thank you in advance!

[AWo]

You don't need it.....we run our farm without that for years, now and we've never missed it. Even if EMC has a different oppinion about that.

You gain such things as that the fastest/shortest path will be used or dynamic load balancing. The pathfailover they advertise is already available with the mpio of ESX.

As we do not face problem regarding the performance in our environment I can't see the deal. Maybe, if we would have to run a lot more guests it might be worth it. But I do not have numbers at hand if it will boost your environment.

Of course, you get more end-to-end data in Control Center with PowerPath.

Have you already read the two white papers from EMC regarding PowerPath/VE? The performance optimization one contains some performance test numbers.

Ask your sales representive to allow you a test installation.

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

Author @ vmwire.net

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Edited by AWo

[Arkady]

Hi,

You mentioned "The pathfailover they advertise is already available with the mpio of ESX."

Are you refering to a particular algorithm?

[AWo]

ESX 4.x offers three kinds of multipathing:

• Round Robin

• Last Recently Used

• Fixed

Regardless of what you have choosen, when one path fails, the next available will take over. You do not have any kind of optimization or path changing while the path is active.

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

Author @ vmwire.net

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[EVW]

The software is designed for Red Hat, not specifically for VMware. Yes, they DO support it running on ESX but:

• You do not need it. You only need a few extra steps on your SAN to make LUNs available.

• Installing this software uses valueable memory of the service console

• Installing extra software inside the service console might cause other problems (or later after installing hotfixes).

Two months ago we actually requested a service call at EMC and they told us that if we have no urgent reason to install this software, do not install it. Until today we do not miss it for a second.

[Arkady]

Do you use Round Robin for load balancing?

[AWo]

No, I set it to fixed but created a distribution chart manually. Performance metrics of the SAN show that the load is equally distributed.

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

Author @ vmwire.net

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