ESX Multipathing

TomHelp4IT · Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:09 pm

I haven't tested this fully yet but I think I have at last got to the bottom of how to configure multi-pathing for Starwind with VMware ESX. This has been giving me trouble for a while, and judging from the forum posts several others have had trouble too.

It actually happened by accident, since we are Starwind partners I've been testing it in our lab with ESX, XENserver and the MS Initiators. The other day I had to do the XEN edit to my Starwind config file in order to make the IQNs visible so I could mount them, then today I wanted to add another target to our ESX cluster. It took much longer than usual scanning but now it lists a path for each NIC I have in the Starwind server (there's four!), and will let me choose a multi-pathing policy accordingly.

I won't bother repeating the change required to the config file, just have a look at the guide to setting up Starwind for XEN.

Btw, this occurs with ESX3/3.5, I haven't tested yet on ESX4 as I only have a couple of servers running it and they are testing something else currently. However it may not be such an issue as VMware appear to have improved dynamic discovery - you can specify CHAP details per target now, rather than just on the initiator.

Robert (staff) · Thu Jul 30, 2009 12:59 pm

Here's an instruction for setting StarWind to work with Xen. http://www.starwindsoftware.com/faq-sta ... si-san#q_1

As for ESX multipathing, there is nothing that needs to be done on StarWind side to enable multipathing. You just need to set the targets twice on the initiator side for both interfaces to the same target.

Thanks.

TomHelp4IT · Fri Jul 31, 2009 2:32 pm

That was the problem I had with ESXi3.5 though, I could list all four target IPs on the ESX Initiator and yet it would only connect the first one and use that as a path. After I applied the change to make it work with Xen though my ESX servers started seeing all the paths properly.

May well be different with ESXi4, I haven't had time to test it yet.

Robert (staff) · Mon Aug 03, 2009 12:51 pm

Tom,

If you find some time to share your testing results with the community - that would be great! Meanwhile we will try to test it in our testing lab.

Thank you.