You can choose from the following Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) policies.
Fail Over Only - Policy that does not perform load balancing. This policy uses a single active path, and the rest of the paths are standby paths. The active path is used for sending all I/O. If the active path fails, then one of the standby paths is used. When the path that failed is reactivated or reconnected, the standby path that was activated returns to standby.
Round Robin - Load balancing policy that allows the Device Specific Module (DSM) to use all available paths for MPIO in a balanced way. This is the default policy that is chosen when the storage controller follows the active-active model and the management application does not specifically choose a load-balancing policy.
Round Robin with Subset - Load balancing policy that allows the application to specify a set of paths to be used in a round robin fashion, and with a set of standby paths. The DSM uses paths from a primary pool of paths for processing requests as long as at least one of the paths is available. The DSM uses a standby path only when all the primary paths fail. For example, given 4 paths: A, B, C, and D, paths A, B, and C are listed as primary paths and D is the standby path. The DSM chooses a path from A, B, and C in round robin fashion as long as at least one of them is available. If all three paths fail, the DSM uses D, the standby path. If paths A, B, or C become available, the DSM stops using path D and switches to the available paths among A, B, and C.
Least Queue Depth - Load balancing policy that sends I/O down the path with the fewest currently outstanding I/O requests. For example, consider that there is one I/O that is sent to LUN 1 on Path 1, and the other I/O is sent to LUN 2 on Path 1. The cumulative outstanding I/O on Path 1 is 2, and on Path 2, it is 0. Therefore, the next I/O for either LUN will process on Path 2.
Weighted Paths - Load balancing policy that assigns a weight to each path. The weight indicates the relative priority of a given path. The larger the number, the lower ranked the priority. The DSM chooses the least-weighted path from among the available paths.
Least Blocks - Load balancing policy that sends I/O down the path with the least number of data blocks currently being processed. For example, consider that there are two I/Os: one is 10 bytes and the other is 20 bytes. Both are in process on Path 1, and both have completed Path 2. The cumulative outstanding amount of I/O on Path 1 is 30 bytes. On Path 2, it is 0. Therefore, the next I/O will process on Path 2.
MPCLAIM command
You can also use the mpclaim command at a command prompt to set the MPIO load balancing policy for a single disk, all disks, or if you preconfigure the policy, you can set the default policy that is applied to all disks that are discovered with a particular hardware ID. Additionally, you may display hardware IDs for all devices that are currently detected. For information about how to use the mpclaim command, in a command prompt, type mpclaim /?, and then press ENTER.
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