iSCSI MPIO issue with Avaya

[winte4]

Hi,

I am having serious issues with a Nortel/Avaya 4500GT stack. I have 4 in the stack and have a VLAN created for my iSCSI network. I am running 3 ESXi version 5 U1 hosts on Dell R710's,1eequallogic and 1xwindows starwind server.

I have spent literally days on the issue. Basically, if I run iometer tests on a vm with roundrobin MPIO configured I only get 70mbps on a sequential 100% read when linked to the windows starwind server. The starwind server has 2 nics.

If I move the networking off the nortel to a cheap netgear switch i get 220mbps

I have ruled out everything: nics, esxi server, cables, starwind (by replacing with windows iscsi target) etc etc.

This issue only happens when using the iSCSI vlan on the nortels.

It is a stock config on the nortels, All I have done is build the stack and create vllans, thats it.

All nics are running at 1GB when plugged in.

When running fixed path in vmware, the nics are saturated 99%. Running MPIO round robin i get 30-50% on each nic.

if anyone knows of any reason why this is happening please help.

many thanks,

Paul

[mayler]

can you paste a show tech? show config? I'd like to help out.