linux iSCSI connection to CX3-40

The idea behind this requirement is that a subnet is made of interconnected switches, just like a fabric is made of interconnected FC switches. Using different subnets will prevent a lot of pain. In case a whole subnet have problems, the surviving one will give you access to the disks. If you connect both NICS to the same subnet, an issue with the subnet will cut access to both paths to the storage.



The 2 NIC cards are Network devices acting as iSCSI initiator.. Can you please explain in a different way your question ??

-s-

thanks a lot for the helpful info.

sorry its my fault in writing the question...

2- is it possible to use the native NIC card as iSCSI initiator and network device at the same time?

Message was edited by:
asawa

1.Initiator(hba) and target(clariion) might see each other
2.See www.open-iscsi.org for software initiator, but i not test this configuration.
May be this doc help you http://www.cuddletech.com/articles/iscsi/index.html

Having 2 IP addresses on the same subnet may confuse your host. When it come sto routing frames, having 2 NICs in the same subnet will make things a lot unclear for your host .
When a host is multihomed (more then 1 NIC) it MUST have IPs in different subnets unless you use some sort of "trunking" or things like that.

Reg your 2nd question .. I don't really know if it's supported. Let's hope someone may shade some light on your question

thanks again Stefano,

i think i am now confused just like my host ,
so please correct my understanding ...

what i got from your last post is i MUST connect each NIC (iSCSI initiator) in the host to diff. subnets and connect each storage iSCSI port to diff. subnets as well.

There are different reasons for using different subnets ...

1) availability (having 2 NICS on different subnets gives you the higher availability)
2) routing (having 2 NICS in the same host on the same subnet probably will confuse your host)

From "storage" point of view you can have 2 paths on the same fabric (even if it won't give you the best availability). But from TCP/IP point of view it's a bad thing.

So I think that you have to AVOID 2 NICS on the same subnet

you can, but not recommended. The whole idea is to segregate iSCSI traffic from regular host traffic.