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MPIO with MS iSCSI Initiator and PowerPath
Multipath Connection to CX3-20c iSCSI LUN Using MS MPIO and EMC PowerPath
The following set of screen shots document creating multipath connections to iSCSI LUNs on a Dell|EMC CX3-20c using the Multipath IO (MPIO) feature of the Microsoft software iSCSI Initiator plus EMC’s PowerPath for load balancing and failover. The server connecting to the CX3-20c iSCSI LUN was server r3win2950a running 64-bit Windows Server 2003 R2. As shown in the following network diagram and Navisphere screen shot, each CX3-20c storage processor (SP) had four iSCSI front end ports of which two were used in this demo, with one each in the 10.10.20 and 10.10.22 subnets. The r3win2950a was connected to both network subnets.
The EMC Navisphere Server Utility was used to register the r3win2950a host iSCSI initiator’s iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN) with the a0, a1, b0 and b1 ports of CX3-20c array. (This can also be done manually using Connectivity Status from the top level of Navisphere). Then LUNs were created and placed in the same storage group as the r3win2950a host (with two LUNs owned by SP A and two owned by SP B):
On the r3win2950a the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 2.04 was installed from Initiator-2.04-build3273-amd64fre.exe and EMC’s PowerPath 4.6.0 was installed from EMCPP.W2003_x64.4.6.0.GA.exe. The MS iSCSI Initiator was then started:
On the Discovery tab the IP addresses of the 4 CX3-20c iSCSI ports were added:
All 8 iSCSI front end ports showed up in the Targets tab. Note the port address (a0, a1, etc., at the end of each target IQN):
Using the Log On function a connection was made to port a0:
Connections were then made to ports a1, b0 and b1:
With the first target selected, the Details screen was brought up:
All four LUNs appeared on the Devices tab:
The Advanced features of the four devices were selected in turn. On the MPIO tab for each LUN “Vendor Specific” was showing, which indicates that PowerPath will be used for failover/load balancing:
The PowerPath Monitor showed four paths to each LUN, one for each port. Although all four paths were shown as “Active”, only the two connecting to ports on the storage processor to which the LUN is currently assigned will be in use at any given time. If the paths to both ports of that storage processor are disabled, the CX3-20c will trespass the LUN to the other storage processor.
The LUNs were now present in Disk Management where they were initialized, assigned a disk letter and had partitions created on them:
Note that connections must be made to four ports on the CX3 array for complete multipathing. This leaves four additional iSCSI front end ports that may also be connected and assigned to a separate server for load balancing.
dave_jaffe |
Latest page update: made by dave_jaffe
, Sep 7 2007, 5:01 PM EDT
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