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Configuring high performance multipathing for ESXi environments

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Applies to

  • VMware ESXi hypervisor
  • ONTAP 9
  • iSCSI
  • FCP
  • FCoE
  • NVMe/FC
  • NVMe/TCP

Description

For high-performance environments, the default claim rule in ESXi may not be able to fully utilize all of the storage and network resources available to the system. Latency based multipathing policies introduced with vSphere's High-Performance Plug-In (HPP) framework and recent improvements introduced with ESXi 9.x have helped address some of these concerns.

When configuring multipathing policies in ESXi, there are several factors to consider:

  • What is the protocol in use?  iSCSI, FC, NVMe?
  • Is the legacy Native Multipathing Plug-in (NMP) framework being used or the more modern High-Performance Plug-In (HPP) framework used?
  • What ESXi version is being used?

When running ESXi 9.x, using a latency based multipath policy for all workloads is preferred.  However, for earlier versions of ESXi, it may still be best to create a custom SATP claim rule.

As a general guide:

vSphere iSCSI, FCP (NMP) NVMe/TCP, NVMe/FC (HPP)
ESXi Default Old Recommendation New Recommendation Default Old Recommendation New Recommendation
8.0 IOPS=1000 IOPS=1 Latency IOPS=1000 IOPS=1 Latency
9.0 Latency Latency Latency IOPS=1000 Latency Latency
9.1 Latency Latency Latency Latency Latency Latency

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