Hi Shane,
When the array LUNs are created, a "host" type is chosen (per the V-Series Implementation Guides in the DataONTAP documentation). This ensures the correct settings (including offsets if needed) are chosen.
Generally speaking, a Tier 1 array will have symmetric paths. In ALUA terms, both paths would be Active/Optimized. These have equal cost, and array LUN access would be evenly split (half the LUNs on one path, the other half on the other path.)
A Tier 2 array may have asymmetric paths. In ALUA terms, one path is Active/Optimized, and the other is Active/Non-Optomized. In this case, all the array LUNs in that group would use the A/O path, and the A/N path would be the failover path
In both cases we depend on the array to tell us which paths are active or preferred.
Hope that helps!
Daniel Isaacs
Technical Marketing Engineer
V-Series
NetApp
Daniel.Isaacs@netapp.com
www.netapp.com