Yes, you can connect 2 host servers with Dual HBA's using redundant data paths with the MD3000. Below is the link for the user guide and it shows all of the cabling options and the one you need is on page 28.

ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_powervault/powervault-md3000_Owner%27s%20Manual_en-us.pdf

If you need anything else please feel free to let me know.

And MD300 support active/active mode?

They are considered as active/active in the fact that both controllers are powered on and communicating. However, only one controller at a time is used to transfer data as the the other controller is for MPIO.

An active/active SAN is typically a SAN that does IO to a given LUN/virtual disk via both controllers at the same time (e.g. EMC Symmetrix).

With ALUA you get virtual active/active as both controllers accept the IO, but internally the IO will be forwarded to the controller than owns the virtual disk/LUN in question.

In this case we have 2 active controllers but only one of them serves the LUN and we can fully utilize just only that one controller which owns particular LUN?

thanks

"They are considered as active/active in the fact that both controllers are powered on and communicating. However, only one controller at a time is used to transfer data as the the other controller is for MPIO."

Isn't a limitation here as the the other controller is for MPIO?

Thanks

MPIO really consists of 2 pieces; the actual multiple path usage and failover.

The second controller is for failover (from a single virtual disk's point of view), the additional ports on a single controller are for running multiple paths to a single virtual disk. When using mutliple virtual disks they get split up between the 2 controllers to spread the load.

Notes about 2 servers on the same SAN:

- servers can only share the same SAN storage (virtual disks/LUNs) if they use a cluster-aware filesystem (e.g. VMFS or GFS) or they have some kind of locking mechanism in place to regulate the disk access (e.g. Microsoft cluster)

- servers that do share the same disks all need to access the same raid controller or raid controllers (this isn't the case for all SANs (e.g. fully active/active SANs), but for most SANs this applies)