Planning for Hyper-V: PowerVault™ MD3200 and MD3200i Series of Arrays
planning the network connection to the Dell PowerVault MD3200i storage array, make sure that the
cabling looks similar to Error! Reference source not found. (this configuration uses maximum
performance by using all four ports per controller; however, a minimum of two connections is
recommended).
Dell PowerVault MD3200i Storage Array Network Configuration
Figure 4.
The Module Disk Storage Manager comes with the device-specific module (DSM) for Microsoft multipath
I/O (MPIO). MPIO provides load-balancing between the two ports of one RAID controller module. For
best performance, make sure that load-balancing is enabled and active. Load-balancing lets you use up
to 4 Gb/s for each virtual disk on the Dell PowerVault MD3200i storage array.
MD3200i Load-Balance Policies
You can change the load-balance policy by using the Windows 2008 Disk Management option. From the
server desktop, right-click the My Computer icon, and select Manage to open the Computer
Management dialog. Click Disk Management to show the list of virtual disks that are attached to the
server. Right-click the virtual disk on which you would like to set the load-balance policy, and select
Properties. From the MPIO tab, select the load-balance policy that you want to set for this virtual disk
You can choose one of these load-balance policies to optimize I/O performance.
Round Robin with Subset
The round-robin with subset I/O load-balance policy routes I/O requests, in rotation, to each available
data path to the RAID controller module that owns the virtual disks. This policy treats all data paths to
the RAID controller module that owns the virtual disk equally for I/O activity. Data paths to the
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