going to multibus mode.. MA8000's ?

[George Quist]

We have a decent running SAN here now.. mix of Windows NT, Windows 2000, (1) Windows 2000 cluster, Windows 2003 server, ( 2) Tru64 Alpha's , (1) Sun ES450 Solaris box.. Most all are single 1Gb fiber attached.. THe MA8000's are both in TRANSPARENT FAILOVER MODE now NO SECURE PATH ANYPLACE. A secound redundant Fabric is under construction ( San Switch 2/32).. Plan to add a 2nd HBA to 2 of the Windows 2000 servers and tie there fiber to the SAN Switch 2/32.. Any way .. WHAT is the effect of putting both the MA8000's into MULTI BUS mode and NOT having secure path in place..??

[Doug de Werd]

not a good idea. Windows will see both paths to the MA8000s as duplicates, and Windows has no way to manage the failover of paths, quite possibly leading to much confusion and data corruption. MS has a free path failover add on called MPIO, but unfortunately it does not support MA8000.

Thanks,
Doug

[Uwe Zessin]

> Windows 2003 server

Watch out! Windows 2003 is not supported with transparent failover. I don't recall the details, but there is a problem with the hotplug environment when a failover happens.