Starwind 5.8 HA - Windows MPIO

[raymondjt]

Hallo,
we have 2 classical iSCSI SAN Storage Servers with v5.8 and one dual-port iSCSI 1GE as NICs.
These two SAN Boxes are synchronized with two Intel 10GE NICs.

Have Windows 2008 R2 HA-devices setup, example san1-quroum.img and san2-quorumpartner.img.

Everything working till now.

From two Hyper-V Servers 2008 R2 MPIO is installed, and we have four portal entrys in the iSCSI Iniator list.

At the moment we have two iSCSI sessions from each Hyper-V host to the san1 disks.

Now I'm wondering if we can make the additional iSCSI sessions to the san2-xxxpartner-disks?

And is there any limit or best practice for the amount of mpio sessions?

Thx in advance
Raymond

[Anatoly (staff)]

Yes, it is possible for sure!

just make sure that sum of client iSCSI connection bandwidths will be not more then Sync channel bandwidth.

[raymondjt]

Okay,
you mean it is no problem if the images have different names?

Next question would be, any way to change the amount of resync sessions?
If yes, range and who and/where can we edit the default value of 4?

Thanks
Raymond

[Anatoly (staff)]

OK, lets do it one-by-one.

you mean it is no problem if the images have different names?

I`m saying that it is possible to add NIC to your iSCSI infrastructure. Just make sure that SyncChannel bandwidth will be not less then all other iSCSI connections.

Next question would be, any way to change the amount of resync sessions?
If yes, range and who and/where can we edit the default value of 4?

It is possible to decrease this number, but to be honest I see no sense in it. But still, if you need this then you should re-create the target and specify the value that you are interested in.

[raymondjt]

Hallo,
we did the standard settings = Synch Sessions = 4.
Possible Range for this value?


We have the two san-nodes synched with a dedicated intel 10gbe port.
At the moment each san-node has two iSCSI connections over dedicated switches (lans).
The SANs as also the Hyper-V server have two dual-ports 1GBe for iSCSI. One dedicated port / switch for LIveMig and CSV.

If I import a virt Hyper-Server with about 200GByte vhd's, it takes about 30 to 60min for the copy.

Sometime taskmanger tells me, iSCSI are busy, sometimes it is the CSV network.

What about changing the max sessions in the next version?

Regards
Raymond

[anton (staff)]

We can but it's not going to help much. With 8 sessions you'll have +5% performance but +50% CPU usage. There are other tricks we're applying so please stay tuned

Hallo,
we did the standard settings = Synch Sessions = 4.
Possible Range for this value?


We have the two san-nodes synched with a dedicated intel 10gbe port.
At the moment each san-node has two iSCSI connections over dedicated switches (lans).
The SANs as also the Hyper-V server have two dual-ports 1GBe for iSCSI. One dedicated port / switch for LIveMig and CSV.

If I import a virt Hyper-Server with about 200GByte vhd's, it takes about 30 to 60min for the copy.

Sometime taskmanger tells me, iSCSI are busy, sometimes it is the CSV network.

What about changing the max sessions in the next version?

Regards
Raymond