You are troubleshooting a storage environment using HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 in a Peer Persistence configuration. A customer reports high…

HPE Alletra Storage MP in a Peer Persistence configuration utilizes Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) to manage host pathing. This protocol allows the storage array to inform the host about the optimal paths for I/O. Paths to the local (primary) array are designated as "Active/Optimized" due to their low latency. Paths to the remote (secondary) array, which traverse an inter-site link and thus have higher latency, are designated as "Active/Non-optimized." This ensures that under normal conditions, all I/O is directed to the local array for the best performance, while the remote paths remain online and ready for a transparent failover if required.

A. Active Optimized: This status is exclusively for the low-latency paths connecting the host to the local storage array, which is the preferred target for I/O operations.

B. Passive: This state is not used in an ALUA-based Peer Persistence configuration. The remote paths are active, not passive, to enable immediate I/O redirection during a failover.

D. Standby: Similar to "Passive," this is not the correct ALUA state. The paths are actively presented to the host and are ready to service I/O, just not as the primary choice.

1. HPE Alletra Storage MP for Block Storage Best Practices Guide. (Document ID: a00136413enw, Published: May 2023).

Page 21, Section: Peer Persistence: "The host multipathing software will mark the paths to the primary array as active/optimized and the paths to the secondary array as active/non-optimized. This ensures that I/O is always serviced by the primary array for the best performance."

2. HPE Peer Persistence for HPE Alletra 9000, HPE Primera, and HPE 3PAR storage Technical white paper. (Document ID: a00026383enw, Published: September 2022).

Page 7, Section: Host I/O path management with ALUA: "The host multipathing software will mark the paths to the primary array as active/optimized and the paths to the secondary array as active/non-optimized." This section explicitly details the ALUA states for primary and secondary paths in a Peer Persistence setup.