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Host support for multipathing

ONTAP always uses Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) for both FC and iSCSI paths. Be sure to use host configurations that support ALUA for FC and iSCSi protocols.

Beginning with ONTAP 9.5 multipath HA pair failover/giveback is supported for NVMe configurations using Asynchronous Namespace Access (ANA). In ONTAP 9.4, NVMe only supports one path from host to target. The application host needs to manage path failover to its high availability (HA) partner.

For information about which specific host configurations support ALUA or ANA, see the Lenovo Storage Interoperation Center (LSIC) and the Host Utilities Installation and Setup Guide for your host operating system.

  • When host multipathing software is required
    If there is more than one path from the storage virtual machine (SVM) logical interfaces (LIFs) to the fabric, multipathing software is required. Multipathing software is required on the host any time the host can access a LUN through more than one path.
  • Recommended number of paths from host to nodes in cluster
    You should not exceed more than eight paths from your host to each node in your cluster, paying attention to the total number of paths that can be supported for the host OS and the multipathing used on the host.