Dell Storage Manager 2020 R1 Administrator's Guide

Virtual Port Mode

Virtual port mode provides port and controller redundancy by connecting multiple active ports to each Fibre Channel or Ethernet switch.

In virtual port mode, each physical port has a WWN (World Wide Name), and is also assigned an additional virtual WWN. Servers target only the virtual WWNs. During normal conditions, all ports process I/O. In the event of a port or controller failure, a virtual WWN will move to another physical WWN in the same fault domain. When the failure is resolved and ports are rebalanced, the virtual port returns to the preferred physical port.

Virtual port mode provides the following advantages over legacy mode:

• Increased performance: Because all ports are active, additional front-end bandwidth is available without sacrificing redundancy.
• Improved redundancy: Ports can fail over individually instead of by controller.
• Simplified iSCSI configuration: Each fault domain has an iSCSI control port that coordinates discovery of the iSCSI ports in the domain. When a server targets the iSCSI port IP address, it automatically discovers all ports in the fault domain.