Cookbook for direct attached P2000 iSCSI to Virtual Connect Flex-10

[chuckk281]

John had an iSCSI question:

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Are there any whitepapers or cookbooks that describe how to direct connect Flex-10 to a P2000 G3 via iscsi? My confusion is that the P2000 G3 has two controllers each with two 10G ports. Do I create four iscsi vnets and attach each one to a controller port? Do I just create two vnets and attach one from VC Flex-10-bay1 to controller A1 and the second vnet from VC Flex-10-bay2 to controller B2?

        The Flex-10 iSCSIcookbooks I have only talk about direct connect to a Lefthand P4300 and nothing about direct connect to a dual controller 10G P2000 G3.

        Any help is appreciated.

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The conversation:

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From Chad:

Well, you have 2 choices really since with internal networks, you can’t have Active-Active SUS/vNet:

-          Create a single network for each connection as you suggested, each on its own VLAN

o   4 networks to configure in the OS

o   4 networks for MPIO

-          Create 2 networks to simplify the configuration and have one port Active and one port Passive in a single vNet, each one its own VLAN

o   2 networks to configure in the OS

o   2 networks for MPIO

Reply from John:

Thanks Chad, 

The 4 network/ 4 network adapter/MPIO seemed very complex and a waste of resources without much gain. I think I will just go with the 2 vnets/ 2 network adapters, I will still have redundancy and with 10G the pipe should be sufficient.

From Chad:

I usually do four uplinks one from each port on the MSA, Ports 1s to VC1, Ports 2s to VC2. Each port on the MSA should have an IP on different subnet. At the OS and profile level I only assign two ports to each blade usually alternating in an even/odd fashion, one from MSA controller 1 and one from MSA controller 2, that way we only use 2 ports per blade for iSCSI and only add the iSCSI address to the initiator’s that the blade is actually connected to.

Other comments or suggestions?