DiskBridge and MPIO problem

[gregorij89]

Hi,

I am using StarWind Free vSAN and I get into the need of exporting two physical disks as iSCSI targets. I have Windows Server box with iSCSI initiator and MPIO enabled. The problem is, that MPIO considers both disk bridges as the same and create another path from second one instead of creating new disk. I´ve discovered that both of them have the same Device interface name. When I´ve tried to connect this two disks to the system without MPIO, everything worked fine. How should I configure MPIO (or Starwind or anything related) to work as expected?

George

[Oles (staff)]

Georgio,

Unfortunately, I am not sure I 100% understand exactly what you are trying to achieve. Is there any chance you could provide me with a screenshot of StarWind Management Console where you have 2 devices exported via disk bridge as well as iSCSI initiator screenshot.

Thank you.

[gregorij89]

Hi, in StarWind Management Console there is one target and this target contains two devices. DiskBridge1 mapped to DISK A and DiskBridge2 mapped to DISK B. If I connect to this target with iSCSI initiator from OS without MPIO enabled, it correctly discovers two disks and in disk management of the client OS I can see DISK A and DISK B. But if I connect to the target from OS with MPIO enabled, it discovers only DISK A and considers DISK B as a second path to DISK A. So in disk management I can see only DISK A. My goal is to see both disks correctly in OS with MPIO enabled. I´ve tried the same with virtual disks and it worked as expected. So my guess is that something is wrong with exposing birdged disks over iSCSI - maybe some identifiers.

Is it clear now?

George

[Michael (staff)]

Hello Gregorij,
Thank you for clarification. In order to investigate your question please provide us with StarWind log here.
Thank you!

[gregorij89]

Hi Michael,
thank you for the reply. Please see the attached log file.

Regards
George

[Michael (staff)]

Hello Gregorij,
I am sorry for the delay in our response.
We found that all devices have the same serial number. The issue can be fixed by editing StarWind configuration file. Please follow the instructions below.
- Stop StarWind service;
- Find and make a copy of StarWind configuration file (C:\Program Files\StarWind Software\StarWind\StarWind.cfg);
- Open StarWind.cfg, find "<device name=" lines and edit them by adding SerialID parameter, which is not as "PACCRID12180LG7" (the disks report it by default);
The result should be like:
<device name="DiskBridge1" file="\\?\scsi#disk&ven_vbox&prod_harddisk#4&8f5d389&0&020000#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}" asyncmode="Yes" readonly="No" CacheMode="none" SerialID="VB00000000-11111111"/>
- Save configuration file;
- Start StarWind service and check if issue has been resolved.