i-SCSI quad path

daviskld,

You would want to configure the server to have all four paths available to the MD, but only one controller (thus 2 ports) owns any particular lun or volume, so there would not really be any performance increase. You use the multiple paths to redundancy and failure tolerance.

-Lance

Yes, you can configue one server to connect to an MD3000i via four NICs but no you really will not increase the throughput. If you have a virtual disk controlled by the left raid controller (RC0) then a data request will stream through one port on the RC with the other port acting a sa redundant connection. If you have two virtual disks, one controlled by RC0 and one by RC1 you will get throughput through one connection on each controller.

We are using VMware 4.1 and the embedded Broadcom NIC ISCI initiator on the R610. We accomplished what you are asking by creating a separate disk group for each controller/port, four total in the case of the MD3000i. We now have primary active paths for each controller/port.