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Malli BoppeFlag for Australia

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Windows 2012 MPIO

We have 2 HP DL 380 Gen 8 servers  with windows 2012 installed on  each of them.
Each server has four NIC's . We are setting up a HyperV cluster. Out of the 4 NIC's, 2 NICs would be teamed for VM traffic. one NIC and ISCSI traffic and one NIC for heartbeat.
We are using HP P2000 as shared storage . On HP P2000 4 NIC are plugged to the iSCSI vlan.
So my question is do I need to install MPIO's on the windows 2012 servers. I thinking as we are using just one NIC on each server for iSCSI traffic we don't need to.
Windows Server 2012VirtualizationMicrosoft Virtual Server

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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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If you are only using a single NIC for iSCSI traffic, then there is no requirement for the MPIO module.

But I would recommend, you use at least two nics, install MPIO, and you will have resilience, and increased throughput to your iSCSI SAN.

Also ensure you enable Jumbo Frames on your network interfaces, network switches, and SAN.
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if you are going to cluster, the minimum required is 8 physical network interfaces

2 - VM Network Traffic
2 - iSCSI (MPIO)
2 - Live Migration Team
2 - Cluster HeartBeat Team
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Malli Boppe
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ASKER

Thanks Guys

@ hanccocka

Can you provide any MS documentation about the minimum cluster requirements showing that we need 8 NICs
http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2012/12/12/step-by-step-building-a-free-hyper-v-server-2012-cluster-part-1-of-2.aspx#.UiiTVj8TlpN

if this is a production system, you will really want to team for resilience, to reduce single points of failure - this is recommended.
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Malli Boppe
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Thanks Hanccocka

Just want to confirm that we don't need to use MPIO when using single niC on the HYperV server even when we have 4 NIcs from the SAN on the iSCSI network
No requirement for MPIO on a single NIC.

MPIO is for more than one nic.
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Malli Boppe
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So on the SAN out of the 4 iscsi NIC if one of them fails will the hosts still be able to access the data
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Malli Boppe
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So you still need MPIO on the server even when using a single NIC
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