You are configuring storage connectivity for three VMware ESXi 8.0 hosts that will boot from and run production VMs on a dual-controller iSCSI SAN. Each host has two dedicated 10 GbE adapters that connect to redundant storage switches. The network team prohibits any form of link aggregation (LACP or EtherChannel) on the storage VLAN. You must ensure that every host has at least two active paths to every LUN and that I/O can be balanced across both SAN controllers without introducing a single point of failure. Which of the following host configurations will BEST meet these requirements while aligning with VMware best practices?
Create two dedicated iSCSI VMkernel adapters on separate physical uplinks, bind each one to the software iSCSI initiator, and enable the Round Robin path-selection policy.
Place both storage NICs in an LACP team on a vSphere Standard Switch and connect the LUN using the software iSCSI initiator.
Mount the datastore via NFS 4.1 and enable NIC teaming with the Route based on originating virtual port policy to distribute traffic.
Replace the 10 GbE adapters with converged network adapters, enable Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and present the LUN as an FCoE target.
Creating two VMkernel adapters that each use a different physical NIC, then binding both adapters to the software iSCSI initiator, enables VMware iSCSI port binding. Port binding establishes separate iSCSI sessions from each VMkernel port to every target portal, giving the host multiple active paths that the Round Robin path-selection policy can use for load balancing. VMware documentation also states that LACP or other link-aggregation techniques should not be used for software iSCSI multipathing, so an LACP team would violate the stated switch restrictions and best practices. Mounting the datastore with NFS 4.1 changes the storage protocol and does not inherently provide independent block-level paths to the SAN controllers. Migrating to FCoE would require new converged network adapters and fabric configuration and is unnecessary to satisfy the redundancy and load-balancing requirements.
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