Use of Preferred path with EVA 5000 VCS 3.x and MPIO 1.02 for Windows

[AjayK]

Hi,

Can someone please confirm the recommended preferred path settings on the Vdisks on EVA 5k with VCS 3.110 and MPIO 1.02 in use on Windows?

Can you please forward any documents that provide these recommendations?

Thanks
A

[IBaltay]

Hi,
the MPIO basic does not have any loadbalancing nor ALB, so the set preferred path should be set to controller a/controller b evenly on EVA side...

[AjayK]

So its not advisable at all to use no-preference. Because my preferred path settings are not working as expecting and I/O is happening on managing controller rather than preferred paths.

[IBaltay]

No,
via the EVA Command view Set preffered path the managing/master controller should be manually set to controller A or B. If you set NONE then it is possible that both controllers will not be nicely balalanced...

[Uwe Zessin]

Using no-preference, the EVA will round-robin assign the virtual disks to both controllers on startup. VCS V3.x is active/passive, so the basic MPIO will automatically go to the managing controller.

Of course, if you know the load on each vdisk, you can use manual path-A/B preference to do a better 'load balancing' of vdisks to both controllers.