HP LeftHand SAN Solutions Support Document - Application Notes - Best Practices for Enabling Microsoft Windows with SAN/iQ®
Table Of Contents
- Application Notes Best Practices for Enabling Microsoft Windows with SANiQ
- Contents
- 1 Chapter: Enabling LeftHand SAN volumes with the Microsoft™ iSCSI 2.0x Initiator
- 2 Chapter: Finding the iSCSI Initiator Version
- 3 Chapter: LeftHand Networks and Microsoft™ MPIO Support
- 4 Chapter: Expanding a Windows Volume on the SAN
- 5 Chapter: Shrinking a Windows Volume on the SAN
- 6 Chapter: Setting the Windows Disk Partition Offset for Optimal Performance
- 7 Chapter: Ensure That Application Resources on iSCSI Volumes Come Online After a Server Reboot
- 8 Chapter: Microsoft™ iSCSI Initiator Session Timeout Setting
- 9 Chapter: Measuring Performance in a Windows Environment
- Overview
- Using Windows Performance Monitor to Measure SAN Performance
- Setting up Windows Performance Monitor
- Saving a Performance Monitor Log for Analysis
- Monitoring More Than One Server Simultaneously
- Scheduling Performance Data Collection
- Using IOMeter as a SAN Benchmark Tool
- Configuring the ISCSI Volume
- Configuring IOMeter
- Configuring IOMeter Access Specification for each Test
- Running the Test
- Interpreting Results
- Access Specifications to Run
- 10 Chapter: Frequently Asked Questions
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• For source IP, select the IP address of the first host server NIC you
want to use to connect to the volume.
• For Target Portal, select the VIP of the SAN/iQ cluster the volume
is on.
6 Click OK to close the Advanced Settings dialog.
7 Click OK to log on to the volume.
8 Repeat this process again, this time in Step 5, selecting the IP address of
the second host server NIC you want to use.
An Overview of Device Specific Modules & Microsoft™ MPIO
The Microsoft™ MPIO framework allows for storage vendors to write and
distribute Device Specific Modules (DSMs) in order to optimally handle
multipathing in a SAN environment specific to that vendor. MPIO is a key
component to building a Highly Available, Fault Tolerant SAN solution. MPIO
technologies provide for the following:
• I/O Path Redundancy
• I/O Path Failover
• I/O Load Balancing
Lefthand Networks DSM for MPIO
Optimized for MPIO in an iSCSI environment based on LeftHand Networks
SAN technologies, the SAN/iQ DSM for MPIO provides for superior path
failover and performance capabilities. The LeftHand Networks SAN is unique
in its distributed system characteristics that give the end-user superior Fault
Tolerance. The SAN/iQ DSM for MPIO further leverages the distributed
system technologies and brings those technologies to the Windows iSCSI
driver. The SAN/iQ DSM provides enhanced MPIO functionality as follows:
• An I/O path is built to each storage module in the cluster on which the
volume resides. The SAN/iQ DSM handles all the path creation
automatically for the Administrator, unlike other native MPIO solutions
which require manual path creation.
• A superior performance architecture over native MPIO solutions;
— Read I/Os are always serviced by a module that actually holds a copy
of the data being requested.