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9 Dell PS Series Arrays: Advanced Storage Features in VMware vSphere | TR1066
3 vStorage APIs for Multipathing
VMware vSphere offers many new and advanced enhancements to the software iSCSI initiator beyond
basic iSCSI SAN connectivity. The most significant of these enhancements is the API support for third-
party multipathing plugins. This provides a framework that enables the PS Series Multipath Extension
Module (MEM) to build upon VMware round-robin multipathing, and to more intelligently route and
efficiently load balance iSCSI traffic across multiple NICs.
The PS Series MEM offers:
 Ease of install
 Increased bandwidth
 Reduced network latency
 Automatic load balancing across multiple active paths
 Automatic connection management
 Automatic failure detection and failover
 Multiple connections to a single iSCSI target
The PS Series MEM will automatically create iSCSI sessions to all members that a volume spans. As the
storage environment changes, the MEM will respond by automatically adding or removing iSCSI sessions
as needed.
As storage I/O requests are generated on the ESXi hosts, the MEM will intelligently route these request to
the array member best suited to handle the request, resulting in efficient, non-statistical load balancing of
the iSCSI storage traffic.
For more information about the PS Series MEM, read Configuring and Installing the EqualLogic
Multipathing Extension Module for VMware vSphere and PS Series SANs.