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VPLEX 5.3 Masking View for Cisco UCS Clustered hosts with Boot Volumes
Hello Everyone,
I am planing a host migration for Cisco UCS hosts to a vplex with a VMAX back-end. The hosts that are to be migrated compose a cluster with each host having boot devices with LUN addresses of 0. How can I create a masking view for this multi-node cluster with each host needing a boot device with a LUN address of 0? These hosts are not on the same front-end ports of the vplex.
Example:
Host A is zoned to:
Fabric A
Eng 1, Dir A, Port 0
Eng 2, Dir A, Port 0
Fabric B
Eng 3, Dir B, port 1
Eng 4, Dir B, Port 1
Host B is zoned to:
Fabric A
Eng 1, Dir B, Port 2
Eng 2, Dir B, Port 2
Fabric B
Eng 3, Dir A, Port 3
Eng 4, Dir A, Port 3
A view setup like this will have more than 1 device that will be used for boot. However a single masking view cannot have multiple devices with the same LUN address. How can I architect this without putting the hosts on the same engine, directors and ports? Any help or design ideas are appreciated.
aaronmatson
19 Posts
1
October 23rd, 2015 23:00
We have several boot-from-san servers using VPLEX and use a round-robin method for zoning each host to different FE ports. If you create multiple single storage-views with each storage-view having their own LUN 0 you then need to ensure that each additional LUN added to each view have matching LUN ID's for that cluster. For example....If the D drive is LUN ID 2 on node 1 of the 3 node cluster, you would want for the D drive (LUN ID 2) to be the same in storage-view 2 and 3. Once you obtain the VPD of the boot device(s) you just boot into the HBA bios and configure your boot devices accordingly. As for the zoning, I would look at page 12 of the attached document for the best practices for zoning with a quad-engine VPLEX. We have all servers in our environment zoned this way, boot from SAN and not boot from SAN servers and get great performance and full HA out of the VPLEX in the event of a failure. https://support.emc.com/docu58228_VPLEX-SAN-Connectivity:-Implementation-Planning-and-Best-Practices.pdf?language=en_US
I hope that I have been able to help you out and answer your questions accordingly.
actwon
4 Posts
0
October 26th, 2015 05:00
aaronmatson,
Thank you for your response. My VPLEX is configured the way the document in the link you provided suggests. How did you create multiple views for the same host using the same port grouping? When I attempted to create another view the console gave me an error that stated I could not create multiple views for a host with the same port grouping (not verbatim, but similar wording).
aaronmatson
19 Posts
0
October 26th, 2015 14:00
First off, your zoning for each hosts should reflect the following:
Host A is zoned to:
Fabric A
Eng 1, Dir A, Port 0
Eng 2, Dir B, Port 0
Eng 3, Dir A, Port 0
Eng 4, Dir B, Port 0
Fabric B
Eng 1, Dir A, Port 1
Eng 2, Dir B, Port 1
Eng 3, Dir A, port 1
Eng 4, Dir B, Port 1
Host B is zoned to:
Fabric A
Eng 1, Dir A, Port 2
Eng 2, Dir B, Port 2
Eng 3, Dir A, Port 2
Eng 4, Dir B, Port 2
Fabric B
Eng 1, Dir A, Port 3
Eng 2, Dir B, Port 3
Eng 3, Dir A, Port 3
Eng 4, Dir B, Port 3
As for the single storage views, what I am saying is you will have individual storage views (Host_A - with a LUN 0) and (Host_B - with a LUN 0). If you require multiple boot devices for a single storage view you just add each LUN into the storage view and configure the HBA Bios to point to the specific boot devices. I do not have a single host in multiple storage views, i have a single LUN in multiple storage views. There is no way in VPLEX to have a single host in multiple views. If you put a single LUN in multiple storage views (as part of a cluster) just make sure the LUN ID's are the same on each node of the cluster. If you don't mind me asking, what OS are you going to be using and what is the end result of what you are trying to do??