P6300 Controllers use only one FibrePort

[Ralf Gerresheim]

Hi,

I installed an P6300,  each Controller uses two FP, which are connected redundant to two SAN - Switches. The other FP are connected with Loopback-adapters. I created some LUNs and present them to ESX-Servers. The preferred path is set for each LUN either to path A or path B. (Failover/failback)

During operation, when I look to the "host port statistics" with evaperf, I see that only FP1 of both controllers are used.

Is this normal?

Can I change it to get more performance, if both FP are used from each controller?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

[Torsten.]

If I understand correctly, each P6000 controller has 1 connection to each SAN, right?

The P6000 wants the servers to speak to the LUN owning controller only, so you have 1 active path per SAN to each controller.

But now it depends on the load balancing method used by the servers, IIRC round robin was not there for earlier ESX versions (I'm not an expert for ESX)? Something like "shortest queue" can result in using a single port only.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, 

could you somehow set priorities or preffered on the ESX servers?

If each server is in both fabrics then it should see both fabric ports.

//Edit, ah, I missed the 'loopback' interface part. .. Or maybe not. Each controller has two FP connected, and the rest in loopback?

[Ralf Gerresheim]

Hi Torsten,

each controller is connected to two different controllers, classical redundant configuration.

But I have found my error in reasoning: while I watched the situation,only one! server was working on the P6300.

When more servers are working on the P6300, both paths were used.

Thanks for your cooperation.