iSCSI is fundamentally dependent on the local network in order to remain functional. We must design and build our networking infrastructure to avoid single points of failure. As such, the Network High Availability section is a prerequisite for iSCSI high availability.

For high availability in an iSCSI environment, we want to avoid NIC teaming and instead use multiple VMkernel ports on vSwitches that are assigned single NICs. After enabling iSCSI on the VMkernel port, the iSCSI protocol will use the multiple VMkernel ports in a multipathing scenario. It is possible to use iSCSI with NIC teaming. However, we must ensure that port security is disabled on the vSwitch ports used for iSCSI traffic. We cannot use Multipathing if iSCSI is enabled on only one VMkernel.

Multipathing provides us with multiple paths to the storage array permitting iSCSI to rapidly deal with link or path failures. After the VMkernel is set up with multipathing, we can manage the iSCSI paths from...