Users Guide

one HBA is active at a time. To achieve higher I/O throughput from the ESXi host to the storage array,
group the HBAs in pairs, and create virtual hosts for each pair of HBAs. This allows for a fully redundant
configuration, but also allows for two of the HBAs to be active at the same time versus a single HBA.
From the storage array, the second pair of HBAs is defined as a separate host, and then you can map
virtual disks directly to the new host or host group. You can use this same methodology to group
additional HBAs in the same manner. This method does require additional management to balance the
LUNs between the hosts/host groups to fully use the FC bandwidth between all HBA groups. When this
method is used in the array, the Automatic ESXi Host Configuration utility cannot determine which HBAs
are configured to each zone in the fabric, and the user must verify that a single HBA is connected to both
fabric zones for each HBA pair group.
Figure 71. Quad port configuration
NOTE: The intent of this configuration is to pair the HBAs so that no group of HBA ports are
contained on a single HBA card (if you are using dual port cards).
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