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HP DSM ALB

 
mattwaddy
Occasional Advisor

HP DSM ALB

We currently use our EVA for both Windows and VMWare hosts. I have been involved with an issue recently where we have been seeing high processor utilisation combined with mirror port activity. We have since moved our vmware hosts to use Round Robin with ALUA so that they will use optimal paths. That has worked fine and has already helped. The next stage is our windows hosts which I would like to do the same. They are currently a mixture of fixed paths and SQST so I began to move a few of the hosts to Round Robin with ALB enabled. However within the next couple of hours I was seeing mirror port activity for the luns / host I had changed.

 

Now I'm a little but puzzled as all I have read indicated that ALB should begin working with the optimal paths like it has in VMWare however this wasn't the case. Now I have since checked our DSM versions and they are not right up to date, could that be the cause or does anyone have any thoughts on what could be causing the issue?

 

Any advice would be appreciated, as managing static paths is a real pain so ALB would really help.

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mattwaddy
Occasional Advisor

Re: HP DSM ALB

I should also add that all our vdisks / luns are set with a prefered controller and failback. I say this because I found the following quote on these forums which makes me wonder if thats why ALB isn't working?

 

"it can be changed manually via the Command view EVA presentation/set preferred path. This is the recommended solution for the OSes that dont have the MPIO ALB. However if you have MPIO ALB then the set preferred path should stay NONE on the EVA controllers and the LB ALB is done automaticaly/dynamicaly according to the LB criteria on the host MPIO side..."