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    Best Practices For Fiber Channel Host Connectivity

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    Best Practices For Fiber Channel Host Connectivity

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    ioklhydehqrkdfhgbn
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    support.infinidat.com-Best practices for fiber channel host connectivity

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    12 views3 pages

    Best Practices For Fiber Channel Host Connectivity

    Uploaded by

    ioklhydehqrkdfhgbn

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    Best practices for fiber channel host connectivity

    support.infinidat.com/hc/en-us/articles/202404251

    Cabling and zoning


    Bandwidth / fan-out table
    Physical cabling
    Recommended configuration
    Example

    Cabling and zoning


    To achieve the best performance from InfiniBox and highest availability for hosts, zoning
    each host to all three (3) active-active-active Nodes on the system is strongly
    recommended. By doing this, we ensure balanced utilization of all the resources on the
    system in an optimal way. However, in some environments there may be too many hosts or
    insufficient FC switch ports available, so tradeoffs may have to be made. The InfiniBox will
    still make a best effort of utilizing and balancing all the Nodes, even if a given host sends
    I/O to just one or two Nodes by using the Infiniband interconnect between the nodes.
    Generally speaking, the following guidelines should be observed when zoning hosts to an
    InfiniBox.

    Each physical host should be zoned to all 3 storage nodes via at least 2 independent
    HBA ports (initiators) on 2 independent SAN fabrics.
    A maximum 1-to-3 fan-out from host (initiator) to storage (target) port should
    normally be used. Thus for a host with two HBA ports, there will be 2 x 3 = 6 paths
    per LUN. For a host with 4 HBA ports, there will be 4 x 3 = 12 paths per LUN.
    Zones should be created as single-initiator WWPN zones. Thus each zone will
    normally have a maximum of 4 WWPNs assigned: 1 WWPN from the host (initiator)
    and 3 from the storage (target).
    As discussed in the previous section, hosts should only use supported and properly
    configured multipathing software to ensure proper load balancing across the storage
    nodes and maximum performance.
    The table below shows examples of common host port configurations with the
    maximum theoretical BW achievable for either read or write. Performance for any
    individual host will depend heavily on the actual host I/O profile.

    Bandwidth / fan-out table

    Host Port # Host Recommended Fan- Paths Per Peak Theoretical


    Speed Ports out LUN Bandwidth

    4GB 2 1:3 6 800 MB/s

    4GB 4 1:3 12 1.6 GB/s

    4GB 6 1:1 or 1:2 6 or 12 2.4 GB/s


    1/3
    4GB 12 1:1 12 4.8 GB/s

    8GB 2 1:3 6 1.6 GB/s

    8GB 4 1:3 12 3.2 GB/s

    8GB 6 1:1 or 1:2 6 or 12 4.8 GB/s

    8GB 12 1:1 12 9.6 GB/s

    Physical cabling
    To achieve the recommended zoning goals, the physical cabling between the SAN fabrics
    and InfiniBox needs to be performed in a manner consistent with maximizing both
    performance and availability. This means cabling two separate SAN fabrics to each
    InfiniBox target HBA with as many connections as necessary to support the host
    infrastructure. Typical installations either use 12 of the InfiniBox FC ports or all 24 of them.
    Consider the diagram below as a basic guide for the physical cabling, where each green line
    represents 2-4 physical connections between the InfiniBox and the SAN fabrics.

    As stated previously, when connecting InfiniBox to the Fiber Channel fabric, special care
    has to be taken to connecting ports from all three nodes and their HBAs to each switch. To
    avoid confusion, InfiniBox comes with a simple, color-coded patch panel that makes the
    cabling simpler. There are two types of patch panels, depending on the release.

    Recommended configuration
    The InfiniBox storage system has three Nodes, each has 8 fiber-channel ports.

    It is recommended that each switch will be connected to each node with 2 or more FC:

    One to the top row (first target HBA)


    One to the bottom row (second target HBA)

    This will also allow each host to connect to two different target ports from 2 different target
    HBAs. Zoning should be done such that each initiator sees one port from each of the three
    nodes.

    That is, each initiator should have 1(initiator ports) * 3(nodes) * 2(target ports per
    node) = 6 paths.

    Example
    In the following example, the host has two initiators. Each initiator is connected to two
    ports on each node, 6 paths in total:

    Fabric A is connected to:


    Node 1 Port 5
    Node 2 Port 5
    Node 3 Port 5
    2/3
    Fabric B is connected to:
    Node 1 Port 1
    Node 2 Port 1
    Node 3 Port 1

    It is recommended for every host to have two independent initiators, to avoid a single-
    point-of-failure on the host side.

    3/3

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