Flex-10 and SUS-uplinks

[RemyZ]

Hi all,

I am in the process of designing a setup for an 'all vSphere' enclosure. Please see the attached PDF.

At the moment, our other enclosures have two SUS uplinks: one carrying all front-end networks and one carrying the iSCSI storage network. We would like to use this design for the new enclosure as well.

The question is though: What is the best way to connect the fibers for the SUS uplinks to the Flex-10 VC's. Or better said: to which Flex-10 modules should I connect the fibers, in order to get the best performance?

My understanding is that one should avoid backplane routing of network packets. Therefore I think it's best to connect the fibers of the SUS-uplinks to the VC module on which the (Flex)NIC is connected. In this setup this would mean:

Front-end SUS fiber 1: port X2 of Flex-10 in Bay 1

Front-end SUS fiber 2: port X2 of Flex-10 in Bay 3

Storage SUS fiber 1: port X3 of Flex-10 in Bay 2

Storage SUS fiber 2: port X3 of Flex-10 in Bay 4

Is this setup supported? I just cannot find any documentation about this. What do you guys think is the best solution?

Thanks,

-Remy

P.S. The idea how to visualize the set up came from VirtualKenneth.com

[Hongjun Ma]

as long as you stack 4 VC modules like in the diagram, it's a supported config.

your physical cabling is good. If you want to have 1 SUS covering front-end network(VC-1 and VC-2), then you are going for active/standby design. to maximum your uplink, you should also consider using active/active design where you have sus-1 cover vc-1 and sus-2 cover vc-2 for front end. the same goes to back end.

have you read VC iscsi book? you can find the link from my blog link.

[RemyZ]

Hi Hongjun, thanks for your answer.

Indeed, we're going for a active/standby design. I should have mentioned that in the OP.

I did not read the iSCSI book yet; it's on my iPad to read in the near future.

-Remy