Seeking SAN Switch Advice

[Julian Stenning]

Hello -

I have a HP c7000 deployment featuring 2 HP B-series 8/12c SAN switches (bays 3 & 4) which I'm hoping for advice on.

Whilst I have plenty of experience with c7000's & VC 1/10 & Flex-10 modules, this is the first exposure to SAN switches, and I'm concerned about some pre-sales advice saying that for maximum resiliency the switches should be installed in bays 3 & 6, with each blade server having two HBA's.

In the virtual connect world it’s all about pairing devices of course, do the same rules not apply to these SAN switches?

Thanks,
Julian.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi!,

usually the two SAN switches in the c-class enclosure would be in two different fabrics (not connected) -> they would not be paired.
You need to manage each fabric separately as each have an independent zoning database.

[Johan Guldmyr]

I forgot to ask: was this what you were asking about? What rules were you wondering about?

Like multipathing and load balancing maybe? If so, maybe you could be a little more specific?

[Julian Stenning]

Thanks for the quick response.

I'm very green on these SAN switches generally, so apologies for the non-specific questions.

Initially what I wanted to know was is it wise to split the SAN switches by putting them in bays 3 & 6 (rather than 3 & 4) and using two seperate HBA's in the servers (BL460c G6's & 7's in my case). The suggestion is that this protects against HBA failure, but it doesn't feel 'comfortable' to me.

Regards,
Julian.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi,

ah, I thought the 3/6 were next to each other.

No I believe the SAN switches should be next to each other so bay 3 and 4 just like you said.

You can see in the c7000 setup and installation guide:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00698286/c00698286.pdf

page 20

That

Mezzanine 1 goes to interconnect bay 3, 4
Mezzanine 2 goes to interconnect bay 5, 6 and then 7.

So if you have them in bay 3 and 6 you cannot use half of the ports as the FC mezzanine cards are all dual ports.