Two x3550 with ESX 4.0 on a DirectAttach DS3400 can live together like Ebony and Ivory?

[carlo_toniolo]

Hi everyone!

This is our simple situation (maybe too simple for this community )

two x3550 with two FC HBA connected on a Dual Controller DS3400 (DirectAttach as subject states ). We found that ESX seems to support this configuration (cluster, MRU or even RR in 4.0 afaik ). Our HW dealer arise some doubt about this.

Has anyone some similar experience ? I know that a Fabric should be much more "cool " but deploying two FC Switch (The solution) push the solution out of customer budget...

Tnx

Carlo

[a2alpha]

I believe that although the DS3400 has dual controllers it only has one FC port per controller. So you could put host 1 into controller A and host 2 into controller B. Both ESX servers could see the LUNs you create but you wouldn't have redundancy if one controller went down only the host attached to the working controller could see the storage.

Maybe look at the DS4700 as it has two ports per controller. Although I don't know the price difference between the DS3400 to DS4700 against adding Fibre switches.

Hope this helps,

Dan

http://www.a2-alpha.co.uk

[carlo_toniolo]

hmm...

DS3400 has 2 port per controller. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ds3000/ds3400/specifications.html

Using this pdf as a lunchpad on page 27 we see a ds3400 ( 172642X ) connected DirectAttached on two server with two Single port HBA

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/resources/systems_storage_disk_ds3000_pdf_config.pdf

[a2alpha]

You're absolutely right, , it does have two ports per controller, sorry. In which case if you only need the two hosts then this would work.

The two single port HBA's would be useful for the redundancy aspect.

Dan

[carlo_toniolo]

So, all I have to do is tell to my reseller "trust me this will work"

TNX

[dquintana]

You have two ports per controller, then, you can connect both path per controller to have full redundancy.

____________________________

Ing. Diego Quintana

VCP-VAC-VTSP-VSP

Wetcom Group

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[a2alpha]

Good luck with that, I mean the only thing would be if you are likely to have a need for more hosts then adding an extra host will also incur the costs of a fibre switch. I suppose it is how easy it is to get that in to the budget this time or next time!

[carlo_toniolo]

Yes, you are right, get (two) FC Switch is the right choice. But theres no need for another server in short. The customer are consolidating an existing mixed env ( a Baremetal and a vmware ESX 3.5 ) on different HW.

tnx both for the answers.