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NX1950 MD3000 SAS
Scratching My head on this, hope someone can help.
June 08, We purchased a NX1950 Box in Basic Congiguration (1 nx1950 and 1 MD3000)
When we bought the box it came with a single SAS HBA. and an additional DUAL network card thus giving the BOX 4 Network Sockets.
Great, we had the network ports we needed plus the HBA SAS 5e.
However when linking it all up we found we needed 2 SAS connections. Complained to Dell who sent us another SAS 5e Card. But the system only has two expansion slots. So the Second network card had to go. One to the LAN for NAS functions and another to the SAN.
This is how it has been operating since then. However i am concerned that we only have 1 network cable to the SAN Thus a major problem should the cable be removed or damaged. As our 2950 ESX server has Dual Network to the SAN router for redundancy, it seems as though this was a major oversight by DELL regarding only 2 port network connections on the NX1950.
Any ideas what i am doing wrong? I thought i bought the right equipment, but Dell are the "Experts" and tell me it is a limitation of the system.
Looking at the deployment guide it says the HBA SAS5/e should have dual connectivity. can some one confirm if this is the case.
Regards Chris
June 08, We purchased a NX1950 Box in Basic Congiguration (1 nx1950 and 1 MD3000)
When we bought the box it came with a single SAS HBA. and an additional DUAL network card thus giving the BOX 4 Network Sockets.
Great, we had the network ports we needed plus the HBA SAS 5e.
However when linking it all up we found we needed 2 SAS connections. Complained to Dell who sent us another SAS 5e Card. But the system only has two expansion slots. So the Second network card had to go. One to the LAN for NAS functions and another to the SAN.
This is how it has been operating since then. However i am concerned that we only have 1 network cable to the SAN Thus a major problem should the cable be removed or damaged. As our 2950 ESX server has Dual Network to the SAN router for redundancy, it seems as though this was a major oversight by DELL regarding only 2 port network connections on the NX1950.
Any ideas what i am doing wrong? I thought i bought the right equipment, but Dell are the "Experts" and tell me it is a limitation of the system.
Looking at the deployment guide it says the HBA SAS5/e should have dual connectivity. can some one confirm if this is the case.
Regards Chris
ChrisBurns1
3 Posts
0
September 8th, 2008 15:00
I am now not sure if the cards do support dual connectivity, and i have just missed it. Need to check again tomorrow
MarcusW01
116 Posts
0
September 9th, 2008 04:00
I`ll hope that the positngs of me help you to solve your issue, the NX 1950 with the MD 3000 is a very good Block/file traffic solution.
Greetings from Germany
Neph
MarcusW01
116 Posts
0
September 9th, 2008 04:00
first of all I`ll need to pass the infos that I`ve got access to european versions of NX 1950 and MD 3000 only. the NX 1950 has the same Chassis and layout like the PE 1950, but is optimized for storage (BIOS, components) and very useful as gateway between block level traffic and Nas functions (i.e. CIFS). I assume you have got 2 raid controller modules in your MD 3000; I`m surprised that you only got 1 onboard nic and the SAS/5 E HBA has 2 connectors, each connector works with 3 gigabit internal on sas drives and 1.5 gigabit on sata drives. Each raid controller on the md 3000 has 2 sas connector and a possible solution might be to connect the port 0 from the hba to connector labeld In of raid controller module 0 , then repeat the steps with port 1 on the hba and plug the cable to the IN Port of raid controller module 1. This will not raise up the performance , but gives you more redundancy, but the limiting point is the single HBA on the NX 1950. for more redundancy and to isolate possible single point of failures I`ll recommend a 2nd HBA and , if necessary , a 2nd NX 1950, the NX 1950 is designed for cluster usage with Windows (please be aware of upcoming costs for licensing), so a possible solution might be 2 NX 1950 boxes with a single HBA and MD 3000 is configured to act a QUORUM for cluster, but this is, in fact, luxury. Depending on servicelevel a single NX 1950 with a dual HBA is a "pricing" solution if the MD 3000 has 2 raid controller modules (strongly recommended). With that solution you can use the dual network adapter also to connect to the network for possilbe link aggregation if switch supports. Please also refer the documentation for MD 3000 at http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/md3000/en/index.htm , the docs for the HBA SAS 5/E http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/Non%5FRAID/SAS_5i5E/en/index.htm and NX 1950 at http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/software/PVNX1950/en/index.htm
ChrisBurns1
3 Posts
0
September 9th, 2008 05:00
I have been a bit of a numpty.
We have a Backup device which requires a dual SAS card. This is the reason i have no ports left.
Thanks for the answer though.
Chris