Windows 2008 R2 iSCSI & MPIO Setup - MSA 2312i

[Dave Baddorf]

I have a Windows 2008 R2 server using MPIO & iSCSI to connect to a dual-controller MSA 2312i. I have a few questions.

First my setup:
1. My first SAN NIC on the Windows server and port 1 of each SAN controller are on one subnet. The second SAN NIC and port 2 of each SAN controller are on a second subnet.
2. I installed MPIO in Windows 2008 R2 features. I don't run any mpclaim commands nor install any HP DSM software (I couldn't find any for Windows 2008 R2).
3. In the iSCSI Discovery I added 4 entries. NIC 1 - SAN Controller 1 iSCSI1, NIC 1 - SAN Controller 2 iSCSI1, NIC 2 - SAN Controller 1 iSCSI2, and NIC 2 - SAN Controller 2 iSCSI2.
4. I see one discovered target on the Targets tab.
5. I click Connect, enable multi-path, and select advanced, connecting the same NIC's to the same IP's (as listed in step 3). I do this step 4 times, one for each connection.
6. Under the Devices tab, after selecting a disk and clicking MPIO I see 4 active paths.

So I come to my questions:
1. Does this look like the correct configuration?
2. Why does it take up to a minute for the access to the SAN to recover after removing one of the cables?
3. When I go into target - devices - - MPIO, the default load balance policy is "Round Robin With Subset". Why do I get an error when I click "OK" leaving this selection or choosing "Round Robin"? The title bar says "Incorrect Policy Settings" and the contents of the dialog-box say "The parameter is incorrect. The round robin with subset policy executes the round robin policy only on paths designated as active. The standby paths will be tried on a round-robin approach upon failure of all active paths." I don't an error when I select "Fail over only".

Thanks to anyone who responds!
dave

[Dave Baddorf]

A few follow up notes:
When connecting the targets (in step 5 above), instead of creating 4 targets, I just created two: one to the SCSI 1 port of controller 1 and one to the SCSI 1 port of controller 2.
This gave me only two connections on the MPIO settings (under Devices or under the properties of the disk in Disk Management - MPIO tab), but both connections showed up as Active/Optimized and I could select the MPIO load balancing policy of "Round Robin with subset" without getting any errors.
However, I still come up with a slow (30 second) recovery under certain tests (like removing power from one of the two switches which connects the SAN to the server.
Is this recovery time of 30 seconds normal? Is there any way to shorten it?

I'd be glad for any responses...
dave

[Travis Langhals]

What kind of performance are you getting with this setup? I'm having issues with read performance using MPIO, my write performance doubles but read stays the same. Atto is a simple tool for testing read/write performance.

[Dave Baddorf]

I am seeing both read & write numbers on both active connections increase so it does look like both paths are being used at the same time...
dave

[Oleksandr]

I have the same problem

[Erwan]

Hi all,

I have exactly the same issue, does anyone have an idea ?