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BP1024 Scaling and Best Practices for Virtual Workload Environments with the FS7500 14
4. Configure NFS target to have multiple IP addresses: On the EqualLogic FS7500, configure the
NAS service with multiple NAS service IP addresses (see Figure 7). In our configuration, we
created eight NAS service IP addresses (maximum available with one FS7500). Load balancing
techniques on the physical switch and the ESXi host are based on IP hashing. Therefore, more
IPs are used in communication and more host, target NICs, and intermediate switch ports are
used, which increases the overall throughput.
Figure 7 NAS service virtual IP addresses
5. Mount NFS exports across multiple NAS IP addresses and distribute the load over multiple IP
addresses: Use the multiple NAS service IP addresses in ESXi host to map the same NFS export
or multiple exports to same backend NAS volume as multiple datastores as shown in Figure 8.
Create alias paths to the same datastore by using different IP addresses. By using multiple
target IP addresses, we are forcing the use of more NICs on the host side and storage side,
which increases the utilization of available network bandwidth. The host side NIC load
balancing is handled by the virtual switch per IP address hashing.