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Multipath Support
Multipathing solutions use redundant physical path components such as adapters, cables, and switches
to create logical paths between the server and the storage device. In the event that one or more of these
components fails, multipathing logic uses an alternate path for I/O so that applications can still access
their data.
In the Fault Tolerant Shared PERC 8 card configuration, the PowerEdge VRTX system has two Shared
PERC 8 cards in an active-passive mode. In this configuration, each host server can access the same
virtual disk through both cards. In the absence of a multipath driver, the operating system identifies the
single disk as two identical disks. The multipath driver aggregates the two disks into a single disk with
redundant access that is then presented to the operating system. The MPIO driver determines the path
chosen for any I/O sent to the virtual disk. Any I/O directed to the passive card is internally redirected to
the active card for completion.
Configuring Multipath Support In Windows
In Windows, multipath support is enabled by installing the MPIO driver. The Shared PERC 8 device must
be added to the list of devices that are aggregated by MPIO after the device driver is installed. Perform the
following steps to add the Shared PERC 8 card:
1. Open the MPIO control panel.
2. Click the Discover Multi-Paths tab.
3. Select DELL Shared PERC8 and click Add.
This is only a one time setup procedure. After the Shared PERC 8 device is added to the list of devices,
the MPIO driver aggregates all instances of the same virtual disk into a single one. The recommended
multipath policy for Windows is round-robin (with subset).
Configuring Multipath Support In VMWare
In VMWare, multipath support is automatically enabled using Native Multipathing (NMP) for all Shared
PERC 8 cards in Dell versions of the ESXi operating systems.
NOTE: The recommended multipath policy is Most Recently Used (MRU).
Multipath support in Linux
Currently, Linux support is not offered by Dell on fault tolerant VRTX configurations.
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