An administrator wants to ensure that all datastores defined on an ALUA-based storage array have load balancing enabled by default. The storage configuration is: - Storage Array Type =…

VMW_SATP_ALUA is the only SATP plugin that understands ALUA target port group state transitions - it correctly identifies active-optimized paths and avoids routing I/O through active-non-optimized paths under normal conditions. Pairing it with VMW_PSP_RR enables round-robin load distribution across the optimized paths, satisfying both ALUA compatibility and the load balancing requirement in a single configuration change.

Changing only the PSP to VMW_PSP_RR while retaining VMW_SATP_DEFAULT_AA does not provide ALUA support - DEFAULT_AA does not parse ALUA target port group attributes, so it cannot distinguish optimized from non-optimized paths and may route I/O suboptimally.

Changing the SATP to VMW_SATP_ALUA while leaving the PSP as VMW_PSP_FIXED does not enable load balancing - FIXED routes all I/O through a single preferred path and uses other paths only for failover, not for distributing load.

NMP (Native Multipathing Plugin) is the top-level multipathing framework that hosts all SATPs and PSPs - it is not itself a valid Path Selection Policy value, and specifying it as a PSP is an unsupported configuration that would not enable load balancing.