I'm a Systems Administrator and my IT Director thinks it's okay to use both 1Gbps and 10Gbps links in an iSCSI multipath (MPIO) setup. His view is that MPIO will handle the different speeds without issue. However, I've come across a lot of documentation and expert opinions that advise against this, citing potential problems like instability, latency issues, and data corruption when the links are under load. I'm looking for real-world experiences, authoritative sources, and clear ways to explain why mixing these speeds is a bad choice to my leadership team. Any insights, stories, or helpful links would be great!
7 Answers
At the end of the day, even if you get a baseline function with mixed speeds, issues like latency and retransmissions will cause headaches. Everyone I've discussed this with has concluded that you need to avoid mixing speeds to ensure smooth operations.
Just say no to mixing speeds! It's a recipe for disaster. You won't just face performance drops; the 1G link could fail completely, leading to data loss. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen too many times.
Honestly, combining a 1Gbps and a 10Gbps link can lead to some real performance issues. If you're looking for reliability, you should either go all 10Gbps or make sure the workloads are okay with 1Gbps. Mixing can really hamper performance overall.
Absolutely! When I worked in data recovery, we had lots of problems attributed to mixed-speed connections. Always opt for uniformity where possible.
This sounds like a classic case I used to encounter while supporting a data storage company. I suggest checking vendor documentation or knowledge bases for any mention of mixed-speed MPIO setups; it might help in convincing your director.
Just to recap, if you’re talking about 1G and 10G NICs on the same target, that setup isn’t advisable without careful configuration. Load balancing should never disregard the differences in speed; otherwise, performance will plummet, potentially risking data integrity.
Mixing 1Gbps and 10Gbps in an iSCSI MPIO configuration is technically feasible, but it's generally a poor design choice. MPIO uses round-robin load balancing, treating the slower link like the faster one, which can lead to latency issues and random failovers. The 1Gbps path will end up being a bottleneck, causing instability when under heavy load. It's really not worth the risk!
Totally agree! I once put together a report outlining the cons of mixing speeds, and it was an eye-opener for management.
You could also consider setting it up with an active-passive configuration, making the 1Gbps the passive link.
I'd recommend strictly using either failover or load balancing in the MPIO setup, but avoid mixing link speeds entirely. If you're working on a failover cluster, there’s a chance that it may flag an unbalanced configuration during validation.
Our cluster setup has multiple nodes connected to a central storage appliance. It's tricky because some connections adapt to different speeds.
Exactly! We had to fix a botched config that mixed speeds, and it led to corrupted VMs.