Ok, I missed the surrounding root part

devices {

}

Apparently "multipathd show config" didn't complain...

Now I put also that and it seems to work, thanks for pointing it

So at the end I have the multipath.conf default file installed by vdsm (so without the # PRIVATE line)

and this in /etc/multipath/conf.d/eql.conf

devices {
    device {
        vendor                  "EQLOGIC"
        product                 "100E-00"
        path_selector           "round-robin 0"
        path_grouping_policy    multibus
        path_checker            tur
        rr_min_io_rq            10
        rr_weight               priorities
        failback                immediate
        features                "0"
        no_path_retry            16
    }
}

Recreated initrd and rebooted the host and activated it without further problems.

But still I see this

# multipath -l
36090a0c8d04f21111fc4251c7c08d0a3 dm-13 EQLOGIC,100E-00
size=2.4T features='1 queue_if_no_path' hwhandler='1 alua' wp=rw
`-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=0 status=active
  |- 16:0:0:0 sdc 8:32 active undef running
  `- 18:0:0:0 sde 8:64 active undef running
36090a0d88034667163b315f8c906b0ac dm-12 EQLOGIC,100E-00
size=2.0T features='1 queue_if_no_path' hwhandler='1 alua' wp=rw
`-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=0 status=active
  |- 15:0:0:0 sdb 8:16 active undef running
  `- 17:0:0:0 sdd 8:48 active undef running

that lets me think I'm not using the no_path_retry setting, but queue_if_no_path... I could be wrong anyway..

How to verify for sure (without dropping the paths, at least at the moment) from the config?

Any option with multipath and/or dmsetup commands?

Gianluca