Recommended method for SAN multipath on a RedHat / HP server

[Yoandy]

hi,

¿what is the recommended method for SAN multipath on a RedHat / HP blade server with QLogic HBAs?

¿Should i use RedHat's shipped driver with multipathd or use HP/QLogic's driver and tools?

RedHat/Linux's driver and multipathd provides (as RHEL5.3 without additional cost$):
- dynamic add/delete of san devices without server reboot
- persitent devices names
- active/active, active/passive configurations
- automatic updates of drivers and tools through RedHat repositories.

I'm very confused also cause some HP's documents stating:
- "[...] HP has been working to transition customers from proprietary, path failover solutions to the new, native failover provided by operating system vendors [...]"

- "[...] These plans include moving to an In-box HBA Driver model for Linux with HP StorageWorks arrays and to a native operating system multipath solution called Device Mapper Multipathing."

so, ¿is HP recommending the use of Linux native drivers and tools(multipathd) to do SAN multipath?

[Víctor Cespón · Accepted solution]

Hi, you can find all the recomended configurations on this web:

http://www.hp.com/storage/spock

For example:

http://h20272.www2.hp.com/Content/ExportPDFView.aspx?Id=7297&typeId=2

[Bharath_Pingali]

Hello Yoandy,

Now that HP supports the native driver for Qlogic HBA, it would be the best option to use the native drivers.

HP also supports Device Mapper multipathing that can be downloaded for free.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=3559651&swItem=co-68651-1&prodNameId=3559652&swEnvOID=4004&swLang=13&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=0


Device Mapper Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/pdf/DM_Multipath.pdf

The guide has info on how-to delete/add and other functions that you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

-Thank You
Bharath

[Yoandy]

thanks for the answers!