I guess I can just put this into a script that gets run when ESX boots, but it would be nice if ESX stored this and remembered it (actually, running esxcfg-mpath -r restores the policy I set, but why doesn’t it do it automatically when booting?).

Although I’m a little late weighing in on this issue, I never-the-less have some pretty bad news on the most bizarre behavior regarding ESX multi-pathing, Active Preferred Paths and HBA FC Storage. I work at a Shop with nearly 50 ESX 3.5 Update 2 Hosts spread across 7 HA/DRS Clusters Targeted at NetApp Filers, so naturally we have the v3.1 Host Attach kit installed.

Most of the Filers are in Single-Image Mode, but the issue pertains to Partner Mode as well. The issue is that I have to check for Path optimization every week on the Hosts as not only does the Active Path flip from a Primary to a Proxy Target, but the Preferred designation flips as well so the Path never fails back to a Primary Target Path.

If I don’t stay on top of it, the Filers send a boatload of FCP Partner-Path Misconfigured Notifications which is not nice. I’ve been watching this since ESX v3.01, and it can happen on a Host reboot, rescan or, all by itself.

It’s only documented that the Preferred Path designation is persistant across reboots…It doesn’t actually work that way!

For symmetric active/active arrays that report all paths as Active/Optimized round robin or any other load balancing algorithm alone will do.