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Dell-EMC Unity and Cisco Nexus connectivity
Good morning everyone.
I've just taken delivery of some new Dell-EMC Unity 450F arrays, and am looking to configure networking to a pair of Cisco Nexus 9000 series switches, configured with a vPC peer link.
So far, this is what I've got configured:
- Unity port A0 - Cisco Nexux 1 port 1, VLAN 100
- Unity port A1 - Cisco Nexus 2 port 1, VLAN 110
- Unity port B0 - CIsco Nexus 1 port 2, VLAN 100
- Unity port B1 - Cisco Nexus 2 port 2, VLAN 110
All ports are via 10GbE optical SPF+ (we have SPF+ modules in both the onboard CNA ports and a 4 port I/O module), and each port on the Nexus is configured as a iSCSI interface (4 in total). At least for the time being, all connectivity will be via block/iSCSI.
A few follow-up questions on the above:
- Is this actually a valid configuration?
- Should I be looking to have the separate VLANs across each switch (i.e., A0 to Nexux 1 via VLAN100, and B0 to Nexus 2 via VLAN100)?
- Is it accurate that LACP and FSN cannot be configured for block iSCSI access?
- Would it be wise to utilize both the onboard CNA ports and I/O module ports for each controller (say, one on each) to provide extra redundancy?
Thanks in advance for any assistance with this.
Uehara Y.
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October 2nd, 2018 23:00
Yes, it is.
I don't think it is necessary. Block traffics of Dell-EMC Unity work based on ALUA which usually uses only an optimized path. It means neither A0 or B0 is usually/mainly used. So, we don't have to divide the two paths into a different subnet.
FYI: Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA)
Yes, you are correct. DELL EMC UNITY: HIGH AVAILABILITY A Detailed Review (P.15) mentions;
"Note that iSCSI interface cannot be created on ports that have link aggregation or FSN enabled. "
It would be better but doesn't have to be so worried about since it is very unlikely that one I/O module/CNA card failure happens on an SP and the other SP has another problem at the same time. For example, "BLOCK EXAMPLE" in DELL EMC UNITY: HIGH AVAILABILITY A Detailed Review (P.17) uses the same I/O module on a SP as follows.