DSM and Windows 2012 R2

[darraghos]

Guys, our vendor has been using SnapDrive and the native Windows 2012 R2 MPIO component and says this is bets practice on this OS. We are using a mixture of 7-mode and C-mode. Is this best practice or should we install a DSM ?

[ekashpureff]

Darraghos -

Yes, this is common practice.

There is a NetApp DSM that may be used for Windows.

I've had many customers do head to head testing and found no performance change between the two DSMs.

This goes back to the old 7-mode days.

You should have no worries here.

Given the other post you made - are you seeing any performance problems ?

I'd trust in your NetApp partner on these issues...

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.)

[paulstringfellow]

I'd agree with the response, the DSM was really designed for pre server 2008 - MS's own DSM offers pretty much all you need, not really the need for the NetApp variant today...

[darraghos]

Thanks for the advice guys. What brought t0 to my attention though (and I should have stated this initially) is that on our SAN attached servers we have 8 paths through the fabric and some systems with 100+ LUNs attached. In Windows 2012 R2, without a DSM how does one see these paths? The only was I can see is by going into device manager, right clicking the disk and looking at the MPIO tab. Not great with 100 disks 😞