[Info] Sobre Multipath I/O para Storage

= 1. Commentary by Jerry Cochran, jerryco@exchange.microsoft.com

Why Windows Administrators Should Care About MPIO
If you're a Windows administrator who has dealt with storage for a
while, you've probably lamented how poorly Windows handles multiple
paths to storage resources. You might have spent a lot of time and
money (e.g., investing in RAID, clustering, and third-party solutions)
trying to ensure that your storage is highly available only to find
that you still had a point of failure: the paths from the server to
the storage device. Because the path to a storage device can encompass
many components (e.g., buses, cabling, switches, controllers,
connectors, host bus adapters--HBAs), ensuring that each link in that
chain is strong can be difficult at best. If you've employed a
specific vendor's multipathing technology to ensure that your systems
can use multiple I/O paths to storage devices, you might also have
been frustrated by the fact that the solution provided neither
redundancy nor load balancing particularly well.
The problem with early versions of Windows was that the Windows
storage I/O subsystem didn't natively support multipath failover or
I/O load balancing. Windows was simply ignorant of more than one path
to a storage device. Storage vendors eager to differentiate their
platform from competitors' products in the Windows space quickly (and
inadequately) filled this functionality gap. However, every vendor did
so uniquely and with varying degrees of success. For example, EMC's
and HP's multipathing solutions worked differently and wouldn't
interoperate.
From Microsoft's viewpoint, such third-party solutions generated
endless support calls when they didn't work. In addition, keeping all
the solutions in sync with Windows releases became a nightmare--and
one that IT shops ultimately paid the price for.
Enter Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO). With MPIO, Microsoft provides
native OS drivers and support for multipathing. Each storage vendor
must then develop what Microsoft calls a device-specific module (DSM)
to integrate MPIO with the specifics of the vendor's hardware
solution. Microsoft requires the products to meet standards (i.e.,
through the Windows Logo program) that ensure compatibility and
functionality.
MPIO starts with the base OS and relies on the Windows Plug and
Play (PnP) facilities to dynamically detect and configure storage
devices. By seamlessly working with the PnP architecture, the MPIO
driver can detect and configure storage devices and the I/O paths to
those devices.
Another key to the MPIO solution is the successful enumeration of
storage devices as they are detected. For enumeration to work, each
device must have a unique identifier. Rather than using disk
signatures (the traditional means of unique identification), MPIO uses
hardware information available from the vendor, such as a device
serial number. Each device must be identified by vendor and type--is
the device unique, or is it one that PnP has already identified and
accounted for through another path? Because not all vendors enumerate
and uniquely identify devices the same way, the MPIO drive and the
vendor DSM work together to identify devices in a way that's
compatible with the MPIO architecture.
MPIO also supports load balancing of the I/O paths to storage
transparently and without administrator intervention. MPIO does this
by maintaining an understanding of which paths are active and
available based on policies and information that the vendor's DSM
provides. If, after receiving an I/O request, MPIO determines that a
path is inactive, MPIO can automatically initiate a transparent
failover and ensure that paths to storage devices are available.
Microsoft put a lot of effort into MPIO to address a myriad of past
concerns and frustrations. MPIO is really a two-part solution,
consisting of MPIO drivers provided by Microsoft and DSMs provided by
vendors. The result is a common framework for multipath I/O that's
independent of the storage vendor. The MPIO approach should make the
storage vendor's work easier and substantially reduce Microsoft's
support burden for multipath solutions. Ultimately, IT customers will
reap the benefits of being able to deploy storage infrastructures with
robust support for multipath redundancy and scalability.


Salu2!!!

Javier Inglés
MS-MVP

e-m@il:jjingles2000@NOSPAMhotmail.com
<<<QUITAR "NOSPAM" PARA MANDAR MAIL>>>

Este mensaje se proporciona "como está" sin garantías de ninguna clase, y no otorga ningún derecho