SQL411: Multipathing(MPIO) Support in Windows Server 2008

A growing number of organizations require that their data be available 24x7, year round. To meet this requirement, centralized storage must be readily available and immune to outages at all times .The Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) framework provides support for multiple data paths to storage to improve fault tolerance of connection to storage, and may in some cases provide greater aggregate throughput by using multiple paths at the same time:

Installing MPIO on Windows 2008:

From 'Server Manager', select 'Add Features'

Select 'Multipath I/O'

To configure MPIO for your Storage, Select MPIO from 'Administrative tools'

Specify the Device HW id for your Storage
(For this Example we are using the 3PAR Storage)

Configure the Load Balance policy for a LUN:

MPIO LUN load balancing is integrated with Disk Management. To configure MPIO LUN load balancing, start the Disk Management. Right click on the disk, then properties