Need the steps for setting up a FIBER SAN?

[theblackknight]

I'm familiar with setting up and configuring iSCSI SANs, but what's the difference in setting up a FIBER SAN?

I know there are FIBER switches and HBA fiber cards, anything else? I need to layout the steps to setup and connect the hardware.

[williambishop]

From the 10,000 foot view.

1. Install hba (x2) in the hosts

2. Connect fiber (generally short wave) to a fiber switch.

3. Connect storage array to switch.

4. Map the volume to the appropriate array port

5. Zone the host to the array's port that you plan to use through the switch management software.

6. Import the active zoning into the array

7. Mask the appropriate luns to the array ports

8. On the host, scan the adapter for changes

9. Format the storage

It's not difficult (although each of the above steps usually entails other sub tasks), as long as you are methodical. Parts are not very much higher than the parts you use for networking it with iscsi either.

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

This maybe be useful as well

Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide

[jbogardus]

I found some of the steps given by williambishop might cause some confusion if you focus on them, since they don't fit in with specific actions I've taken with IBM SANs and are substeps of other steps mentioned. So here's a modification of those steps with a little added info.

1. Install hba (x2) in the hosts

2. Connect fiber (generally short wave) to a fiber switch. (This step refers to host hba to switch connection)

3. Connect storage array to switch.

5. Zone the host's port(s) to the array's port(s) that you plan to use through the switch management software. (multiple ports referenced for a redundant configuration)

7. Mask the appropriate luns to the array ports

8. On the host, scan the adapter for changes

9. Format the storage (Create VMFS datastore)

[AndreTheGiant]

Fiber SAN usual have a switch fabric topology...

With two isolated FC switches.

On switches you have to do the right zoning (say who can talk with who... that is not present in iSCSI switches).

On storage you have to set the right masking (say which host can access a particular LUN), but this could be typical also for iSCSI storage.

For ESX configuration see also:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_san_cfg.pdf

Andre

[williambishop]

I don't see how you're going to skip #4....I've got several vendors arrays, and you always have to map a volume to an FA. It may be called something else (as in the DS series), but it's still mapping.

Always try to use multiple paths if possible...it's expensive (double the cost, because you double the environment), but it's well worth it.

[krowczynski]

ISCSI is cheaper and you can use an sw iscsi initiator.

FC is much expensive but faster.

It depends on that what are you want to do in your enviroment and how much money you want to spent!

[DheereshLodhi]

This may help us as well in our account

[williambishop]

That is fallacious, it CAN be more expensive....it doesn't have to be, you get what you pay for.

A single chassis cisco san switch is not much more expensive than a standalone cisco ethernet switch, and since you REALLY need a private san, be it ethernet or FC, you're going to be buying something. The cards are not overly pricey, and you do need offload cards. You can use SW initiators, but you're going to be using host cpu cycles to do so, and performance will drop even further.

If you've got a small farm(and I mean really small), then you can go that way. But if it's production, and it's needing higher reliability and performance, then certainly FC is affordable (now more than ever), and much more reliable.

[jbogardus]

It is called mapping on the IBM DS series array, but I am just referencing that steps 4 and 7 aren't always clearly distinct. On the DS array you will:

1. Create a Host or Host Group definition defining HBAs that should have access to the same LUNs

2. Map the LUNs to a Host or Host Group

On the DS series I felt the map & mask references to be associated to the same Host Group and Map steps and I wanted to make sure that didn't cause confussion.

[williambishop]

Ah....Most of those will be additional sub-tasks (on a symm you have to create a host definition and mask the storage to the definition, on an HDS you create a host group or host and attach the ldev to it). I didn't want to get him too deep in the weeds.