Enable Windows 2008 R2 MPIO with EMC VMAX

After installing windows server 2008 R2 using single path.

Enable dual path on VMAX and zone the server with the new port.

Windows will see 2 disks for each volume in Device Manager.

Install Windows MPIO by enabling MPIO Feature in windows server management.

by default windows will add a device hardware ID as follow: Vendor8Product16.

Remove this entry and add the Following”EMC#####SYMMETRIX#######”

this vendor Product ID can be found by the following command:

mpclaim -e

Reboot the server .

windows 2008 R2 boot from SAN with EMC VMAX +Qlogic FC and IBM Blade HS21

Microsoft recommends that the LUN should be presented to the server through one path.

So i’ll go through all the steps required for this configuration to be successful.

On VMAX:

1- Create new volume on VMAX

2- Assign Volume to Storage Group

3 – Create initiator Group with one initiator we will be using port0 initiator

4 Create a port group , with only one port e.g 1E0

and finally create a masking view to present the LUN to host.

On FC Switches:

1- Create Alias on switch 1 for HBA port 0 with alicreate

2 – Zone HBA_port0_alias with VMAX_1E0 Port

3- add new zone to configuration using cfgadd

4- save config

5- enable confige

Now on the server.

1- Boot the server

2- Press F1 to access Bios settings

3- disable Planar Raid controller by going into PCI / IO devices

4- Reboot the server and wait for the HBA prompt Ctrl + Q

5- select adapter settings, to enable BIOS .

6 – press ESC to save config.

7- select configure host adapter again. select bootable device

8- make sure you see only one path.

9- press enter, select LUN. usually you will be presented with 2 LUNs (LUN 0 2MB and LUN1)

10 – choose LUN1

11- Exist FastUtil

and now we are ready to install windows 2008 R2