C7000 with VC Flex-10 direct connect to P4500 SAN - HP supported configuration

[chuckk281]

Rich had a customer question regarding directly connecting a P4500 SAN to a VC module:

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Experts

I have a customer that wants to direct connect a P4500 SAN via iSCSI to VC Flex-10 without an external switch.  Checking if this is a “HP supported” configuration?  Thanks.

From customer:

“I need to understand whether a direct attached configuration is both possible and supported by HP’s standards.

Blade Chassis C7000 w/ 2 x BLc Virtual Connect Flex-10 Modules (455880-B21) connected to P4500 SAN (BQ888A)?

Presently, the Production setup has an HP 3500 switch in-between for the iSCSI traffic from the Flex-10 modules in the Chassis to the P4500 SAN Storage Controllers.  I need to know if that switch can be eliminated?”

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Reply from Hilton:

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Hi Richard

The BQ888A was a multi node system. So unfortunately it’s not supported.  From the VC iSCSI Cookbook ( 4.20 )

The direct-attached scenario supports only one iSCSI device per VC Active/Active network. To support more direct-attached iSCSI devices, it’s mandatory to create for each iSCSI device an Active/Active VC network. This limitation of one device per VC Active/Active network implies that you cannot directly attach multiple HP StoreVirtual 4000 Storage nodes to the same VC domain because in a multi node environment, StoreVirtual nodes need to talk to each other and this requirement is not possible as VC don’t switch traffic between different VC networks.

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Other comments or suggestions?