Lefthand P4300 Redundancy

[Rodrigo Verissimo]

Hello group, we are planning the purchase of a P4300 for one of our customers and we have several questions :

The P4300 will be set up as a cluster accessed by four virtualization nodes running hyper-v, for full redundancy, we plan to add two dedicated switches for ISCSI trafic.

First Question, how many NICs has each P4300 node ? one, two ? If two, we plan to bound them and connect one P4300 node on one switch and the other on the other switch.

To provide complete fault tolerance, then each hyper-v node will connect one of his ISCSI NIC to one switch, the other to the other switches, each with a different IP, and then MPIO will be used to access the SAN cluster.

The other question : I suppose that the ISCSI switches need to be stacked in order to the two P4300 nodes to replicate ?

If somebody could point me to online resources about properly configuring fault tolerance for P4300, i would be grateful.

Thank you.

[René Loser · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Q1: 2 NICs per Node - yes, NIC-bondig is recommended (ALB)

Q2: The traffic between the nodes runs over the same iSCSI network - so, yes, you have to connect the iSCSI switches from both sides.

Q3: check the documentation CD that delivered with the nodes. For redundancy you have to select "network-raid2" while creating the LUNs.

Another great document is:
Fundamentals of a Well-Built SAN
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA2-5616ENW&cc=us&lc=en

regards,
reNe

HP PreSales

[Rodrigo Verissimo]

Thanks for the answer.
However, could you tell me if the
HP NC373F or NC380T HBA are supported by the lefthand ? I read somewhere that the only compatible HBA was the QLogic QMH4062 (but it is specific to blade c-systems, and we will install rack mount servers)

Thanks again.

[René Loser]

Hello again,

Regarding compatibility of NICs:
Do you talk about the NICs within the nodes?
Or within an attached server?

In the nodes: onboard NICs, 2x 1Gb -> you can't replace those. The only option is to use the 10Gb option.

Within the server: each GB NIC is supported. You don't have to use a "special" iSCSI NIC.
Only exception: if you want to boot via iSCSI you have to use a supported NIC.
check out the latest support matrix -> see attachement.

regards,
reNe

HP PreSales Storage