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BP1028 EqualLogic iSCSI for Fibre Channel Professionals 11
From a host perspective, a group of EqualLogic arrays appears as a single storage system. A built-in
network load balancer transparently redirects iSCSI requests to the proper member as needed.
However, a host-side software component is also available to automatically manage and optimize
iSCSI sessions. The EqualLogic Host Integration Tools (HIT) kit for Windows or Linux contains a host-
side service or process that allows it to quickly reference which member contains the portion of data
or “slice” of the volume that is needed for an I/O operation. This reduces the need for iSCSI
redirections by array members and improves overall performance. For VMware, the same functionality
is provided in the Multipathing Extension Module (MEM) which is a Path Selection Plugin (PSP) for the
VMware Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA). The HIT kit (or MEM) also automatically creates the
optimal number of connections to each volume once the initial connection is made.