Monday, February 2, 2009

Multipathing on Filers

All the filers in our environment are multipathed. Requirement of Multipathing:

System requirements

Multipath storage for active/active configurations is available only on the following storage system models:

FAS900 series
FAS2020 and FAS2050 systems
FAS30xx series
FAS3140 and FAS3170
FAS6000 series
SA200
SA300
SA600

Active/active configuration-type requirements

Multipath Storage is available for the following types of active/active configurations:

· Standard active/active configurations
· Mirrored active/active configurations
· Stretch Metro Clusters

Your active/active configuration must be installed and fully operational. Your configuration testing should include successful failover and giveback.

Note: Fabric-attached MetroClusters have redundant disk paths by default; no special configuration is necessary.

Disk shelf requirements

Multipath Storage for active/active configurations is available for only the following combinations of disk shelves and modules:

DS14mk2 FC or DS14mk4 FC disk shelves with ESH2 or ESH4 modules
DS14mk2 AT disk shelves with RoHS-compliant AT-FCX modules


Best practice recommendation

If any loop in your active/active configuration is cabled for Multipath Storage, every loop should be cabled for Multipath Storage. This is the recommended best practice.

Note: If you have a mixed configuration in which some loops are cabled for Multipath Storage and some are not, the system displays a configuration error message when you boot the system or when a disk on a loop that is cabled for Multipath becomes single-pathed.