topic Re: P4500 Networking Design in StoreVirtual Storage

P4500 Networking Design

vmcreator — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:28:12 GMT

As we know, it is best practices to seperate the iSCSI [SAN] network from other networks AND NOT ROUTABLE. On this basis it is quite strange that the P4500 network design does not have a seperate Management Network from its built in VIP and iSCSI network.

It suggests as an example:

VIP - 10.10.10.x

( NICs would also be 10.10.0.x etc) , everything is 10.10.10.x on the same subnet.

This is then a problem when it wants NTP, DNS, Email notification etc but its iSCSI/VIP subnet is on a 10.10.10.x, where most companies would have a different subnet for servers, DNS, NTP etc such as 192.168.x.x for example.

As an open forum, how do most people configure their networks to solve all desired configurations?

Thanks in advance

Bob

Re: P4500 Networking Design

GlennE — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:31:13 GMT

In our environment I have a single vm guest that has two nics.. an iscsi nic & a lan nic. The guest has the CMC running, syslog, ntp & email relay setup. I havent bothered using DNS in the iscsi network.. but I guess there is no reason why the guest could not be setup to be a DNS cache as well.

Re: P4500 Networking Design

Steve Burkett — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:03:26 GMT

We just made it routable between our iSCSI network and our production network on our Cisco 3750G stack. Doesn't seem to have any real issues with that.

Re: P4500 Networking Design

oikjn — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:15:20 GMT

same here. Our gateway is our firewall so we use that to make sure only the traffic we want gets routed to the iSCSI network. I thought about just putting in one multi-homed device to provide the link to the serviced that might require outside access, but decided to just go with a routed network design for simplicity.... its all outbound only and the traffic is so light its easy to monitor.

Re: P4500 Networking Design

David_Tocker — Wed, 23 May 2012 05:16:13 GMT

Yeah I cant think of a way of monitoring the P4000's effectively without being routable. You obviously dont want your iSCSI traffic being routed, but I dont see why it would if the host has an IP in the iSCSI vlan - Whatever OS you use will always pick the shortest path (nic) first unless you play with your routes..