DSM-MPIO with one storage controller (FAS2040)

[dforbes]

Does the FAS2040 need two controllers to be able to use DSM-MPIO?  I have several HP windows servers (2008 R2) that have two iscsi adapters connecting to two different Cisco switches (with each switch having a connection to the one storage controller). One switch goes to a VIF of ports eoa and eob (ip=10.x.x.10), the other switch goes to port eoc(ip=10.x.x.14). Port eod is to the network.  The iscsi initiator has both ip's added, but I'm thinking that only one ip is actually "live".  Telneting into the FAS2040 I can only ping one of the iscsi adapters in each of the Windows servers.  Shouldn't I be able to ping both iscsi adapters?  btw, we get many iscsi errors in the system event log.

Thanks.

[christin]

I don't have a specific answer to your question, but found the following KB article that might help you.

How to setup iSCSI MPIO on Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 using Microsoft multipathing

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=1013370

If you need further assistance please open a case with NetApp Global Services.

Regards,

Christine

[shrinivk]

In general DSM/MPIO does not require two controllers for its working.It should work with single controller but still with redundancy by having multiple ports of the controller through different HBA's/Switches or without any redundancy by having just single path.The controllers can be in active/active or active/passive modes when there are two, depending on the storage.However host should be able to ping both the controllers if they are configured correctly for network access always.