What is the correct multipath path checker to use with a NetApp SAN?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • NetApp SAN connected via Fibre Channel

Issue

  • What is the correct multipath path checker to use with a NetApp SAN?
  • We are seeing momentary drop-outs of our multipath storage with the error:
Jun  1 20:59:41 hostname multipathd: mpathX: sdX - directio checker reports path is down

Resolution

The correct path checker to use with NetAPP SANs under RHEL6 is tur.

Root Cause

RHEL 6.0 shipped with directio as the default path checker for NetApp SANs, as this was the best advice which the upstream Linux community had at the time of kernel 2.6.32.

During the development of RHEL 6.2, NetApp suggested the default path checker be changed to tur.

This change was tracked as Red Hat Private Bug 799842 and was committed by Red Hat engineers back to the open source device-mapper project.

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