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Dell Storage Center SCv2000 and SCv2020 Storage System Deployment Guide

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Two Fibre Channel Fabrics with Dual 8 Gb 4-Port Storage Controllers

Use two Fibre Channel (FC) fabrics to prevent an unavailable port, switch, or storage controller from causing a loss of connectivity between host servers and a storage system with dual 8 Gb 4-port storage controllers .

About this task

This configuration includes two fault domains, two FC fabrics, and two FC switches. The storage controllers connect to each FC switch using two FC connections.
  • If a physical port becomes unavailable, the virtual port moves to another physical port in the same fault domain on the same storage controller .
  • If an FC switch becomes unavailable, the storage system is accessed from the switch in the other fault domain.
  • If a storage controller becomes unavailable, the virtual ports on the offline storage controller move to the physical ports on the other storage controller .

Steps

  1. Connect each server to both FC fabrics.
  2. Connect fault domain 1 (shown in orange) to fabric 1.
    • Storage controller 1: port 1 to FC switch 1
    • Storage controller 1: port 3 to FC switch 1
    • Storage controller 2: port 1 to FC switch 1
    • Storage controller 2: port 3 to FC switch 1
  3. Connect fault domain 2 (shown in blue) to fabric 2.
    • Storage controller 1: port 2 to FC switch 2
    • Storage controller 1: port 4 to FC switch 2
    • Storage controller 2: port 2 to FC switch 2
    • Storage controller 2: port 4 to FC switch 2

Example

Figure 1. Storage System with Dual 8 Gb Storage Controllers and Two FC Switches Storage system with dual four-port storage controllers connected to host servers through two switches.
  1. Server 1
  2. Server 2
  3. FC switch 1 (fault domain 1)
  4. FC switch 2 (fault domain 2)
  5. Storage system
  6. Storage controller 1
  7. Storage controller 2

Next steps

Install or enable MPIO on the host servers.
  • NOTE:After the Storage Center configuration is complete, run the host access wizard to configure host server access and apply MPIO best practices. For the latest best practices, see the Dell Storage Center Best Practices document on the Dell TechCenter site ( http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/).

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