Question : How to setup iSCSI switches for better performance.

We are consider to setup an iScsi SAN with 2 Ethernet switches for redundancy. The iScsi SAN is supporting a mission critical database apps.  The 2 Ethernet switches will be dedicated for servers only.

For performance, each server with a iSCSI connection, we will dedicate one Ethernet NIC port  from the server, do I need to use a seperate subnet to force all iSCSI traffic through the dedicate NIC? i.e. all LAN traffic goes through NIC1 10.0.0.x, all iSCSI traffic goes though NIC2 192.168.1.x?

Answer : How to setup iSCSI switches for better performance.

It is always god idea to segment your ISCSI traffic with LAN. Here are some of the best practices

1. Enable Port fast on the switches
2. Enable Spanning tree protocol
3. enable Flow control
4. Enable Jumbo frames if your SAN supports, jumbo frames should be enabled on SAN, switch as well NIC
5. Use Vlan for ISCSI traffic incase if you use the same switches for your LAN as well

It is always good idea to have 3 NIc's in the server where 1 NIC can be used for LAN and the other two NIC's can be used for redundancy and also load balancing depending on your SAN compatibility