topic Re: ONTAP 8.3.2 - FC with Windows 2008 R2 EE Std SP1 - Round Robin or Least Queue Depth? in ONTAP Discussions

ONTAP 8.3.2 - FC with Windows 2008 R2 EE Std SP1 - Round Robin or Least Queue Depth?

J-L-B — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:25:03 GMT

Have a dozen windows hosts with NetApp luns without the NetApp DSM 4.1 installed. Should the MPIO be set to Round Robin with subset or Least Queue Depth?

Re: ONTAP 8.3.2 - FC with Windows 2008 R2 EE Std SP1 - Round Robin or Least Queue Depth?

ekashpureff — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 22:21:59 GMT

JLB -

See the Microsoft technet article:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee619734(v=ws.10).aspx

The differences on load bal policies is down at the end of the doc.

Round Robin is the default and works well in most cases.

For higher performance environs you may try least queue depth ...

🙂

I hope this response has been helpful to you.

At your service,

Eugene E. Kashpureff, Sr.
Independent NetApp Consultant http://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenekashpureff
Senior NetApp Instructor, FastLane US http://www.fastlaneus.com/
(P.S. I appreciate 'kudos' on any helpful posts.)

Re: ONTAP 8.3.2 - FC with Windows 2008 R2 EE Std SP1 - Round Robin or Least Queue Depth?

J-L-B — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:57:28 GMT

Thanks. The NetApp DSM 4.1 package usually sets to Least Queue Depth by default along with some other timeout settings. When it was released I believe Least Queue Depth was best practice for NetApp attached luns under 2TB with Round Robin being best practice above 2TB. Since it hasn't been updated in a while, I was trying to find clarification on what is best practice for the Windows 2008 and above luns. Especially on the AFF nodes available now.