Connecting NS20FC to SAN Switch

Hi,

We have an NS20FC that I'm looking to implement in our environment. I see there are (4) Fibre Channel ports (0 Fibre, 1 Fibre, 4 Fibre, 5 Fibre) on each SP that I believe are to be used as Front-end ports.

Can all (8) ports be used to connect the NS20 to our SAN switches, or are any designated for direct host connectivity?

If all (8) can be used, I have another question. We have (4) fabrics, can one port be used from each SP to connect the box to each fabric?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Dave

Responses(6)

dscarani

20 Posts

0

October 21st, 2008 12:00

Rainer, thanks for your response.

Is there somewhere I can find information regarding the MV requirements related to port usage?

Also you mention the SAN versus NAS usage. Is this something that has to be planned ahead of time? Is it hard to change after initial implementation? The reason I ask is our until has 11 (5 + 6) 300GB drives. Again, is there somewhere I can read about this?

Sorry if these are ignorant questions, I'm just new to the box and trying to learn what I can.

Thanks.

Dave

nandas

1.5K Posts

1

October 21st, 2008 12:00

Hi Dave,

You are right - each SP Has got 4 FC ports (0, 1, 4, 5) which can be used for SAN hosts. It can be either through Fabric Switches or to Directly attached hosts - based on your environment and requirement. So the answer to your first question is - YES - all 8 ports (on 2 SPs) can be used for Hosts (SAN or direct attach).

If you want to connect this storage to all 4 fabrics - you have only one port per SP available to the fabric (total 2 ports considering both SP) - say for example FC port 0 on SPA and SPB goes to Fabric 1 - this is possible and doable. But this will provide only 2 paths to each host considering they are dual HBA - and of course there will be no load balancing possible even if you have Fully licensed Powerpath software - as there is only one path to each SP from any host. So, choice is yours. The zoning need to be done accordingly.

Hope this helps,
Sandip

nandas

1.5K Posts

0

October 21st, 2008 12:00

You are most welcome as always.

. BTW, hope you will not mind selecting the answer as Correct or Helpful, if it has satisfied you.

. This wil also help in finding the answer that helped you for other forum users and any future forum or powerlink searches. Thanks a bunch in advance.

See you soon on the forum,
Cheers,
Sandip

dscarani

20 Posts

0

October 21st, 2008 12:00

Sandip, thanks for your response.

Dave

R

Rainer_EMC

8.6K Posts

0

October 21st, 2008 12:00

the only exception being if you want to use MirrorView - then not all ports are equal and MV wants to use a specific port.

my other advice
- think carefully how much you want to allocate to SAN and how much to NAS
- if possible give NAS enough LUNs to play with
- distribute your LUNs between SP's
- look at Powerpath or ALUA for dual-HBA hosts

dynamox

2 Intern

•

20.4K Posts

0

October 21st, 2008 20:00

take a look at this guide regarding MirrorView port requirements etc..

Home > Support > Technical Documentation and Advisories > Software ~ J-O ~ Documentation > MirrorView > Installation/Configuration

as far as SAN versus NAS usage ..If you want to utilize AVM (automatic volume manager) i can think of RAID group requirements where Celerra supports specific raid group types for ATA and specific types for FC.

for Fibre channel drives you have these templates:

1. FC_RAID5_4+1_HS_4+1_HS_HS_HS_HS
2. FC_RAID5_4+1_HS_R1_R1_R1_R1_HS
3. FC_RAID5_4+1_HS_8+1
4. FC_RAID5_4+1_HS_R1_R1_4+1

for SATA drives you have these templates:

1. ATA_RAID5_4+1_4+1_4+1
2. ATA_RAID5_HS_4+1_4+1_HS_HS_HS_HS
3. ATA_RAID5_HS_6+1_6+1
4. ATA_RAID5_HS_4+1_8+1
5. ATA_RAID3_HS_4+1_8+1

so if you you build a SATA raid group that consists of 6 drives (5+1) ..Celerra AVM will not recognize it.

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