MSA1500 zoning requirements

[Miika T]

I have MSA1500 + SAN 2/8 switch, with 4 BL20G3 blades (RHEL4) and 1 BL20G3 with Windows 2000 server, with single path configuration and Selective storage presentation enabled. I've create linux and windows profile acl's in CLI and RHEL is installing ok, the problem is with win2k, which blue screens every time Qlogic hba driver is loaded (no rdp in use). Do I need zoning, if ssp is enabled and only Linux and Windows is being used?

-Miika

[Stephen Kebbell]

Yes, you need zoning.
Create at least 2 zones:

LinuxZone: All Linux Hosts + MSA1500
WindowsZone: W2K Hosts + MSA1500

Or you could create a zone for each server. Each zone would have 1 server HBA and the MSA1500 port.

Regards,
Stephen

[Peter Mattei]

Best practice is building a zone for each host/HBA so that one HBA only "sees" the MSA port. This is called overlapping zones.
Some HBA/drivers get confused if they "see" other HBAs especially if they are from different OSes.

Cheers
Peter

[Miika T]

It appears that the Win2K server that I was about to install, installed hapily with RDP, but not manually, even when no zoning is configured (only ssp).

For SAN 2/8, is the zoning only done with CLI, or can it be done in web interface? Any pointers to howto do it w/o browing through San design guide + all san 2/8 reference manuals?

-Miika

[Peter Mattei]

Zoning can easily be done from the switches web browser. On the bottom of the screen there is a little icon that opens the zone management.
After defining the config name, zones and assigning members to the zones you need to save the config and enable it!

Cheers
Peter

[Miika T]

I created zones for both linux and windows servers. I can still see all nodes from Windows server's acu. Should't zoning prevent this from happening?

-Miika

[Peter Mattei]

That is OK. ACU gets its information from the MSA. I mean you want to configure your MSA from ACU!
You should not see Linux LUNs and HBAs from your Windows OS view!

Peter

[Miika T]

The windows hosts see all linux lun's in acu.

-Miika

[Peter Mattei]

That is perfectly OK.
You must not see the LUNs in the Disk Manager of Windows!
Peter