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P4500 G2 SAN support "boot from (iSCSI) SAN" MPIO using a HP ProLiant BL460c G7 server blade?

 
LionShawn
Occasional Contributor

P4500 G2 SAN support "boot from (iSCSI) SAN" MPIO using a HP ProLiant BL460c G7 server blade?

I am using an HP ProLiant BL460c G7 with the built in converged NIC's to boot from SAN. This process works great but, I noticed the other day there is only two paths to my SAN (which is an HP LeftHand P4500 G2, there are two enclosures) and I want to use MPIO, I think I am shooting for 6 paths to the SAN virtual IP but getting 2 in reality. In my virtual connect I am using two iSCSI HBA connectors (which aren't available to the OS in the network manager) to my SAN network to boot from one is primary and one is secondary boot. In Windows Server 2008 R2 I installed the MPIO drivers and enabled it for my device (causes a reboot, so I did that). Then I installed with windows solution pack for the HP DSM and VSS services, ran all windows updates and rebooted the server. Still only two paths though and still scratching my head. I read some Microsoft documentation and sure enough like 32 paths are supported when doing an iSCSI boot with W2K8 R2. I tried to setup Round Robin as the load balancing policy in the MS iSCSI initiator and it still is only two paths, still only two paths... Not sure what else to try here. Has anyone had success doing this that can point me in the right direction? The other thing I noticed was when putting two NICs in virtual connect to the SAN network on my "boot from SAN" machine it also won't MPIO to a "data" drive volume for instance, only builds a couple paths to that too. What am I am missing here? Do you have to have physical hard drives to do MPIO to a SAN? Thanks in advance for any info or assistance!

 

Update: I was able to load my BL460c G7 with an OS from scratch with 2 iSCSI HBA's in Virtual Connect and it still won't multipath (well more than 2 paths) with all the new HP firmware and driver updates, as well as all the windows updates. I was however able to add 2 standard NIC's that are attached to my SAN network and connected to a volume with MPIO and got 6 connections to build to that volume on my P4500 G2. So the problem specifically seems to be the "boot from SAN" not performing the full MPIO that the Microsoft iSCSI Intiator does provide when connecting via standard NICs.