To stack or not to stack iscsi switches with Block only

Certainly, in order to accomplish high availability and failover, I suggest you mirror your switch by connecting both of them to each SP respectively in a typical core-edge infrastructure.

And I also suggest you use the similar switch types and switch technologies to achive the better fabric balance.

Finally, there is still one thing that I've noticed you want to make iscsi connection. On the 5300 DPE, there are only 2 on-board FC ports by default. You may need to leverage additional ultraflex I/O module to work that out. The available modules are below:

•Four port 1 Gb BaseT iSCSI I/O module with RJ-45 Copper

•Two-port 10 GbE BaseT iSCSI I/O module with RJ-45 Copper

•Two port 10 GbE iSCSI I/O module w/ SFP or Twinax Copper

If your ethernet switches are stackable, I would suggest enabling the stack functionality. It provides a consolidated management interface and you will not lose the redundancy, high availability and performance. You might consult Dell for more information:

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/shared-content~data-sheets~en/documents~stacking_dell_powerconnect_8100_series_switches.pdf

Thanks, I chose not to stack them.  Reason is usually when updating the firmware both switches will reboot. 

I have it as:

Switch 1 - Has SPA 0 and SPB 0

Switch 2 - Has SPA 1 and SPB 1

Just a quick observation.  Connecting the cables in the manner you have and with the fact that the MirrorView ports are assigned as the lowest logical port on each SP (A0 and B0) for each of the supported protocols: FC and iSCSI, if you were to implement MirrorView all of the traffic would be on the same switch.

Of course if you never plan to implement MirrorView then it isn't a concern, but generally speaking personally I'll cable both the FC and iSCSI ports with the assumption that there is even a fraction of a chance that they decide later to configure it.  This would mean for a VNX the following layout:

Switch 1 - SP A0 and B1

Switch 2 - SP A1 and B0

Just a thought.

Sorry I meant a8 b8 a9 b9

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