Add-on Fibre Channel on a existent Simplivity Gen 10

[MGonca3]

Hello there

We have a customer that wants to add a storage on an existent Simplivity Gen10.  We believe a MSA2060 will be enough. The idea is to connect the MSA2060 directly to the Simplivity and to do this we need to add a Fiber Channel board. At Product Bulletin we find the part number R2J63A - HPE SN1610E 32Gb 2-port Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter, and as the MSA has 02 controllers, the idea is to add 02 boards. Is it possible? Best Regards

[Sanika]

Hello @MGonca3 

I think this is not supported.
Connection of MSA2060 to SimpliVity Gen10 may be possible by connecting to vSphere via iSCSI, but this might not be a permanent setup. This is only for migrating into SimpliVity. A permanent solution would be connecting iSCSI inside the guest VMs running in SimpliVity.
If you want to configure the MSA2060 with SimpliVity node, it would not fall under SimpliVity data and there would be no dedupe or compression supplied from a SimpliVity standpoint.

If you have further doubts regarding this, I would recommend you to contact HPE support team for more assistance.

Hope this information is helpful.

Regards,
Sanika.

If you feel this was helpful, please click the KUDOS thumb below. Also consider marking this as an "Accepted Solution" , if the post has helped to solve your issue.

[MGonca3]

@Sanika Hello Sanika.

Hope everything is fine.

Thank you so much for your reply.

I forgot to mention on my question that the only purpose of the MSA2060 will be backup.  The MSA will have 1.2 PB, and eventuly if the customer has a problem, ( and they had a ransomware attack) they will have all VM backuped. Today they have 03 Simplivity with 02 cluster and will add more 02 Simplivity until the end of the year. 

Best Regards

[gustenar]

Hello @MGonca3 ,

Connecting an MSA directly to the SimpliVity federation for backup purposes is not supported. We do support and offer integration with HPE StoreOnce Systems as an external backup solution, this would be your best option as it is fully compatible and can be managed directly from the SimpliVity system. You can read more about the integration of both products here: 
Modernized data protection with HPE: HPE SimpliVity and StoreOnce integration 

Related videos: 

HPE SimpliVity - HPE StoreOnce integration with HPE SimpliVity  

HPE SimpliVity - HPE SimpliVity with HPE StoreOnce 

[MGonca3]

Hello Gustenar.

Thanks for your reply.

Our customer has two cluster today., one with 02 Simplivity (HA) e other with one Node. They will acquire more 02 Nodes to create a HA between two different locations. The standalone existent Simplivity will be use in case they have problems on the both sites. As they have more than 100TB data (with compression and Debup) they need to backup the information of the two sites and to do not expend so much money the idea is to connect the Storage MSA with direct attached and use the Veeam to make the backup. we do not intent to add the MSA to the federation.

Hope I had explained myself clear.

Best Regards

Marco Da Ronch

The existented simplivity a Gen10 version today is a standalone 

[mikesp191 · Accepted solution]

Hello Marco,

Really,  Connect MSA20x0 through Direct attached Storage (DAS) with either SIMPLIVITY Node or CLUSTER doesn't supported.  To access Data Volume on the MSA storage, you will have install a new NIC in the Simplivity Node, create a iSCSI connection and present to Virtual Machine on VSphere directly. To this, MSA should be iSCSI interfaces, not Fibre Chanell interfaces.

To Smplivity Backup Solution, you can implement HPE StoreOnce Appliance as an External Data Repository. Using Simplivity Backup Option, you can choose the target data Backup either  Simplivity Node or StoreOnce Appliance. To the StoreOnce Appliance, Simplivity Backup uses Catalyst Protocol to transfer data, with security and immutability feature. 

When you use MSA 20x0 to External Data Storage, some features aren't supported, such as DEDUP, COMPRESS, Load Balance and High Avaliability resources. MSA 20x0 connect through Simplivity doesn't able to uses these features. Therefore, MSA will be External Data Storage only.

BR,

[MGonca3]

Hello Mike

How are you?

Thanks for your e-mail. 

As our customer have some budget constrains we will check the solution using the Storeonce. we will also check the possibilituy to use a switch (or 02 switches to have redundance ) betwwen the Simplivity and the MSA. 

Best Regards