NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices

10.3 A STORAGE ARCHITECTURE WITH TRADITIONAL ETHERNET
In this configuration, the IP switches to be used do not support multi-switch Etherchannel trunking, so each
storage controller requires four physical network connections. This design is available in two options
(represented in Figures 35 and 36). Both designs are very similar. They both provide multiple active links to
each storage controller, provides a means to scale throughput by simply adding more links, require multiple
IP addresses per controller and each utilize two physical links for each active network connection in order to
achieve path high availability.
THE MULTI-MULTIMODE DESIGN
The multi-mode design requires each storage controller to have at least four physical network connections
(depicted). The connections are divided into two multimode (active-active) VIFs with IP load balancing
enabled, one VIF connected to each of the two switches. These two VIFs are then combined into one single
mode (active-passive) VIF. NetApp refers to this configuration as a second-level VIF. This option also
requires multiple IP addresses on the storage appliance. Multiple IP addresses can be assigned to the
single-mode VIF by using IP address aliases or by using VLAN tagging.
ADVANTAGES OF USING MULTI MODE VIFS
Storage controller connection load balancing is automatically managed by the Etherchannel IP load
balancing policy.
Data I/O to a single IP is aggregated over multiple links
DISADVANTAGES OF USING MULTI MODE VIFS
• Some switch side configuration is required.
• Some storage traffic will cross the uplink between the two switches.
Figure 35) Storage side multimode VIFs.
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