P2000 G3 MSA - inter-network communcation for host ports

[TomBaines]

Hi,

Simple question really about inter-network routing, but some background first:

We're running iSCSI only on our P2000 G3, and have both storage networks routing through our perimeter firewall device, as our network originally used to be much smaller (I've inherited this setup, don't ask). Now the network has grown much bigger and IPS, storage traffic and VPN concentration are all fighting for resource on the firewall, so we're moving routing for storage off the firewall to get resource usage down, and also to mean we get full wire-speed for storage, which we're clearly not getting since it's going through IPS.

Our host ports are currently configured in the following way:

Controller A:

Port A3 (iSCSI)

10.90.0.100

255.255.0.0

10.90.0.254

Port A4 (iSCSI)

10.91.0.100

255.255.0.0

10.91.0.254

Controller B:

Port B3 (iSCSI)

10.90.0.101

255.255.0.0

10.90.0.254

Port B4 (iSCSI)

10.91.0.101

255.255.0.0

10.91.0.254

The default gateway on all those ports are the firewall device in question that we're trying to mvoe storage away from. We have static routes between the 10.90.0.0/16 and 10.91.0.0/16 networks on the firewall that are giving us issues with asymmetric routing when we try to offload the storage traffic onto the new routing device - we don't know who in our org configured these static routes or why, so now the simple question... do we need to keep routes between the two storage networks? Obviously the two controllers have heartbeat between themselves, do the two storage networks need inter-network access from the point of view of the SAN for any other reason?

Thanks,

Tom

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, 

AFAIK it should be enough to provide routes for hosts to both iSCSI networks.

I do not think it is needed to have routing between the ports in the controllers (they communicate via the midplane anyway).

HP's SAN Design Reference Guide might be able to sched some light and I believe there are best practices guides for the P2000 G3 too.