Dell PE-2850 and AX150i Dual Proc-SAN (iscsi SAN)

[Johan De Meersman]

Ray Charles wrote:
> When I used the PowerPath provided devices
> (/dev/emcpower*) instead, my "problem" went away.
>  
> PowerPath is managing the actual /dev/sd* devices
> redundancy and presents a single device for multiple
> identical SAN volume seen through 
> different path/controllers.
>   
correct.
> So if I use PowerPath, with the iscsi NICS, then I
> don't have to do bonding of those cards with the
> bonding module. Correct??? Sorry if I am being dense,
> but it's a question I'll get at work and I just want
> to be certain.
>   

First of all, it's been a while since I played with this stuff, and not
on emc, so this is memory/conjecture.


If you've got a dual-switch setup as I lined out in one of my previous
mails, I don't think you can easily set up bonding anyway, since your
nics aren't connecting to the same switch.

Powerpath is in effect taking over the failover functionality of the
bonding setup (but on the disk level, which ensures data integrity)
although it probably doesn't offer the bandwith concatenation - although
it's possible, so check the documentation on that.

Theoretically, it should be possible however to insert 4 nics in your
host, connect them per two to the same switch, bond those for the
bandwith advantage, and have powerpath do it's multipath thing on the
bonded devices which still go to different switches. Note that this is
very likely not a supported configuration, and that the EMC people will
look at you very strangely if you explain it to them :-)



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