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EqualLogic PS6000E Switch Uplink
We're in the process of putting the hardware infrastructure in place for an EqualLogic PS6000E SAN. Looking at the documentation that comes with the PS6000E, it appears that when using two switches, as we are, there are Ethernet uplinks into the switches from the PS6000E and the two switches are connected to each other using a high-speed trunk of some sort. (We are using Dell 5424 switches, so we have aggregated ports between the two switches using LAG and LACP.) All is working well in that regard.
My question concerns remote access to the PS6000E and the Dell switches. According to the hardware installation diagram that comes with the PS6000E, there are no additional uplinks from the SAN switches; thus they are sitting out there on their own subnet w/ no remote access. To control the SAN switches or the PS6000E, we have to set a static ip address on a support laptop and connect that laptop into a switch. Really, not a big deal, but we would rather be able to connect to the switches and the PE6000E from our desktop machines, wherever they reside. To that end, I have configured a router interface on our core switch and uplinked it to one of the Dell 5424 switches. Is this okay or recommended, or will this result in a looping situation or cause some other problems when we put the PS6000E into production?
Thanks for any advice.
Anonymous
5 Practitioner
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274.2K Posts
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March 4th, 2011 12:00
Hello,
If you set the routing up correctly and only use a single GbE interface into your other network there should be no problems with looping.
There's no requirement that the SAN subnet be isolated completely from the other networks. In fact to facilitate replication, and outside gateway or router is needed.
The point of the manual is to show that it's better to isolate iSCSI and non-iSCSI traffic and if possible don't share SAN and LAN traffic in the same switch. (Enterprise class switches could handle that load, but not everyone has those)
Alternatively, but you give up an interface, is you can set the last Ethernet port on the array (ETH3 in this case) as a dedicated Mgmt port and put that on your LAN subnet. That would preclude the need for a router.
Re: 54xx. Please make sure you have the latest FW, that flowcontrol is enabled and if using Jumbo Frames, don't use the default VLAN. Also, iSCSI optimization needs to be turned OFF. Finally, there are sometimes QoS rules for VoIP by default. Those should be removed to give more buffering for iSCSI.
Regards,
-don
Dev Mgr
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March 4th, 2011 14:00
There is another option as well; take an existing server with a Java capable browser that has 1 unused NIC port, and plug it into one of the iSCSI switches, give it an IP on your iSCSI subnet and you use that as your management station for the switches and the array (and you can enable SMTP forwarding on this as well to route email from your SAN via this SMTP router to your mail server).