The XenServer Host’s Settings

This page was deprecated on 18 August 2025. Refer to the SANsymphony WebHelp for the latest and updated documentation.

Multipath Configuration Settings

The 'Defaults' Section

Applies to all versions of XenServer

Add or modify the polling_interval as 10 (seconds)

defaults { polling_interval 10 }

This is a DataCore-required value that manages how often the Host checks for access on a previously detected as failed virtual disk path. A smaller setting will interfere with Host performance.

Do not add the 'polling_interval' parameter to the 'device' section as it will not work as expected.

The 'Device' Section

The following entries are all DataCore-required values. See the notes section following for more information.

With ALUA:

# XenServer 8.2

device {
vendor "DataCore"
product "Virtual Disk"
path_checker "tur"
path_grouping_policy group_by_prio
failback immediate
path_selector "round-robin 0"
prio alua
}

# XenServer 7.1/7.2

device {
vendor "DataCore"
product "Virtual Disk"
path_checker tur
failback 30
path_selector "round-robin 0"
rr_min_io_rq 100
# rr_min_io 100
path_grouping_policy group_by_prio
prio alua
}

Without ALUA:

# XenServer 8.2

device {
vendor "DataCore"
product "Virtual Disk"
path_checker "tur"
path_grouping_policy group_by_prio
failback immediate
path_selector "round-robin 0"
}

# XenServer 7.1/7.2

device {
vendor "DataCore"
product "Virtual Disk"
path_checker tur
failback 10
path_grouping_policy failover
prio hp_sw
}

  • vendor / product
    By default, all virtual disks created in SANsymphony will use the vendor and product strings ‘DataCore’ and ‘Virtual Disk’ listed above. Also see:
    Changing Virtual Disk Settings
  • failback
    For XenServer 7.1/7.2 an extra ‘wait’ period (10 seconds) was added to prevent unnecessary ‘failback’ attempts.
  • path_checker
    This is a DataCore-specific value. No other value should be used.
  • path_grouping_policy
    This is a DataCore-specific value. No other value should be used.
  • path_selector (applies to ALUA enabled Hosts only)
    This is a DataCore-specific value. No other value should be used.
  • prio
    For XenServer 7.1/7.2 the 'hp_sw' switch was required to get consistent failover/failback DataCore's own qualification tests.
  • rr_min_io_rq (applies to ALUA enabled Hosts only)
    Use on systems running kernels newer than 2.6.30. This is a DataCore-required value. No other value should be used.
  • rr_min_io (applies to ALUA enabled Hosts only)
    Use on systems running kernels older than 2.6.31.
    This is a DataCore-required value. No other value should be used.