iscsi best practice

mtnman1000 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:27:55 GMT

I have a FAS2220 with 2 controllers and am struggling a bit with ifgrp's for iscsi. It is layed out as follows:

Controller 0

iscsi_ifgrp1 - e0a & e0c using multimode dynamic to production switch (shared with LAN but on it's own VLAN) 192.168.80.11

Controller 1

iscsi_ifgrp1 - e0a & e0c using multimode dynamic to production switch (shared with LAN but on it's own VLAN) 192.168.80.13

Windows Server 2012

iscsi nic 192.168.80.10 and attached to one target 192.168.80.11

From what I understand the server will only communicate over the VIF on controller 0. It will use controller 1 if controller 0 fails, is this correct?

On the windows server I can't setup a second target to 192.168.80.13 for MPIO is this correct?

The reason I ask is that on other SAN's I had 2 controllers and each had an IP on a different subnet. I would place 2 switches in the path and setup both IP's as targets on a Windows server using MPIO over 2 seperate NIC's. More of an active/active iscsi controller setup. It seems NetApp does not behave this way.

My end goal is to create multiple paths with higher bandwidth by buying 2 switches seperate form the LAN/CORE but the only way I see this is to have the 2 interfaces on controller 0 e0a and eoc on seperate switches and do the same with controller 1. The issue I can't figure out with this scenario is how to get the server to use 2 nics via MPIO since it's all the same subnet. Am I missign something here?

The only solution I can come up with is to team 2 NIC's on the server and place each NIC in the team on the two seperate switches.

Any thoughts on this would is appreciated.

Re: iscsi best practice

GLENDONLOWDER — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 20:34:31 GMT

SAN Configuration Guide : https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMP1518989

SAN Administration Guide : https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMP1368845

I'm making some assumptions about the documentation links. I'm assuming Data OnTap 8.2.2 7-Mode which may not be correct but is a safe assumption form the controller type and age of the post...

Please take a look at page 6-10 of the SAN Configuration Guige I believe the configuration you're describing is the "Multi-network HA pair in an iSCSI SAN" config.
Figure 3: iSCSI multi-network HA pair
Fully redundant? Yes
Type of network? Multi-network
Different host operating systems? Yes, with multiple-host configurations
Multipathing required? Yes
Type of configuration? HA pair

Then wander over to the SAN Administration Guide and read startin on page 82. I'd explain it but the documentation actually does a very good job.

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iscsi best practice

Re: iscsi best practice