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M4300 iSCSI awareness

BenBierbaum
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M4300 iSCSI awareness

We are using the M4300-12x12F switch at 2 client locations for iSCSI traffic between our storage array and VMWare hosts.  This switch has been working great and we have really had zero storage issues since we upgraded to this switch last year.  Our storage vendor was pushing another brand of switch that was about 5 times the cost so I'm very happy that we went with the Netgear.

 

I recently decided to read the manual and found out that the switch has some iSCSI awareness and QoS settings.  Currently we have had these settings disabled and haven't had any issues but the switch is dedicated for iSCSI only at this time.  We are considering adding ethernet traffic to this switch so that we can have one connection for both iSCSI and normal network traffic from each VMWare host. We also have a second connection going to a second M4300 for some redundancy but the plan is to use the converged ethernet cards on our hosts to combine iSCSI and ethernet traffic.  I think that if we do this it would be smart to enable the iSCSI QoS features.

 

My question is on the option for setting up the iSCSI QoS - the manual (page 680) states "The administrator can select VLAN priority tag (VPT) or DSCP mapping for the QoS preferential treatment."   Does anyone have a recommendation on which method would be preferred - VPT or DSCP or a reason to choose one over the other?  I've tried to research it but I can't find any guidance.  Maybe it doesn't matter but I'd like to understand it better either way.

 

Thanks,

Ben

Message 1 of 3
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: M4300 iSCSI awareness

Hi @BenBierbaum,

 

Welcome to the community! 🙂 

 

I inquired your concern as well as your questions to the higher tier of NETGEAR Support.  As per the higher tier of NETGEAR Support, "VPT is Layer 2 QoS (802.1p) where DSCP is layer 3. Both work in a similar way: the priority chosen (along with the queue mapping settings) determines the egress queue used for iSCSI packets on the switch.  Since VPT is in the layer 2 header, the priority is lost if the packet is routed. With DSCP the priority set on the packet can be kept even if it is routed (depending on how the routers routing the packets are configured)."

 

 

Regards,


DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

Message 2 of 3
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: M4300 iSCSI awareness

@BenBierbaum,

 

I just want to follow-up on this.  Let us know if you have further inquiries.

 

If ever your concern has been addressed or resolved, I encourage you to mark the appropriate reply as the “Accepted Solution” so others can be confident in benefiting from the solution. The NETGEAR Community looks forward to hearing from you and being a helpful resource in the future!

 


Regards,

 

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

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