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XtremIO Zoning Best Practices
Today we had our XtremIO Two Brick Storage Array Configured. I'm looking for some guidance on Zoning Best Practices to our FC Switches. With the Two Bricks we have a total of Eight Fiber Channel connections, Four Fiber Connections to Fabric A and Four Fiber Connections to Fabric B. Below are examples of the FC initiators "Aliases" from XtremIO connections Fabric A & B. How would I implement zoning for a new server that has two HBA's "One HBA per fabric" For Example: Server Name: UCS01 - (HBA1 "UCS01_HBA1" & "UCS01_HBA2"). Is it best to zone each HBA using one-to-one, or create one big zone set with all four XtremIO FC connections and my Server HBA?
Does our servers see storage from both X-Bricks? If so would we just zone one server to one X-Brick? Looking for guidance, whitepapers, best practices, etc...
Switch "Fabric A" aliases "UCS01_HBA1" |
"X1_SC1_A"
"X1_SC2_A"
"X2_SC1_A"
"X2_SC2_A"
Switch "Fabric B"
aliases
"UCS01_HBA2"
"X1_SC1_B"
"X1_SC2_B"
"X2_SC1_B"
"X2_SC2_B"
Thank You
Terry
echolaughmk
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April 27th, 2015 10:00
Hi,
In terms of whitepapers, the one that comments the most on this question would be the Host Configuration Guide located here:https://support.emc.com/docu56210_XtremIO_2.2.x_-_3.0.3_Host_Configuration_Guide.pdf?language=en_US
Specifically your situation is called out here:
I think the minimal approach from the guides would be break your hosts up per x-brick as depicted above given you have a dual-HBA host and probably reduce your zoning some unless you want more than 4 paths per host. This approach would require you to have some understanding of balancing the server load across the bricks as you added new servers.
If you wanted to go to the max of 8 paths per host given dual-hba's and not really have to worry about any loads across the bricks, you would maintain the zoning you have above as depicted here:
In terms of the actual zoning, you can do either single-init/single-tgt or put all of the XtremIO tgts into one zone with a single initiator if you are constrained on zone counts in your fabric. The main goal is that an HBA should have at least one path to each storage controller on a given X-Brick for availability.
HTH
echolaughmk
522 Posts
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April 27th, 2015 13:00
Hi,
Initiators from multiple hosts can be in one initiator group, but an initiator (WWN) can only be part of one initiator group at a time.
-K
dynamox
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April 27th, 2015 13:00
Can one initiator participate in multiple initiator groups, which each initiator group provides connectivity to a unique set of LUNs. Why you may ask ? I have a system that can only address 512 LUNs per target. If i can have that host in multiple initiators groups i could give it 512 LUNs from one set of ports (let's day xbrick 1), and then zone it to another xbrick and give it another 512 LUNs. Do-able and supported ?
Thank you
dynamox
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April 27th, 2015 14:00
my XIO CE told me that an initiator can be in multiple groups, can we get clarification ?
Kumar_A
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April 27th, 2015 15:00
Typically, customers would create one initiator group for each server (you don't have to) and then put them in initiator group folders for ease of use.
But one initiator can be added to one initiator group only at any point of time, however a LUN can be mapped to multiple initiator groups (for example, when in a cluster).
Anonymous
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April 27th, 2015 15:00
A single initiator WWPN (HBA port) can participate in multiple zones with each zone containing either multiple targets or a single target. The LUN zoning you're referring to is LUN masking which is done at the array level. In conjunction with WWPN zoning you achieve isolation. The reason for single initiator zoning is to avoid RSCNs from other host initiators. I would also suggest looking at the release notes of your respective code level for additional information.
dynamox
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April 27th, 2015 20:00
Avi,
so pretty much the same behavior as on VNX, an initiator can belong to one and only one storage group (IG in XIO terms) ? I am not concern about presenting one LUN to multiple IG. My host can only address 512 LUNs per target (target being ports on the XIO). If i could zone the host to brick 1, that gives me 512 unique LUNs, then zone the same host to brick 2 which would give me another 512 LUNs. Can i accomplish that ?
dynamox
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April 27th, 2015 20:00
i am not talking about zoning
Kumar_A
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April 28th, 2015 15:00
There is no association of XtremIO LUNs to any specific X-Brick. All the LUNs (and the data) that are created in the array are spread across all the X-Bricks and are available on all the target ports.
Where is the limitation of exposing only 512 LUNs to a single target port coming from?
dynamox
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April 28th, 2015 15:00
operating system Egenera
Kumar_A
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April 29th, 2015 15:00
Unfortunately, there is no way in XtremIO to segregate what Front-end ports LUNs are seen on. When volumes are mapped to an initiator group, those LUNs can then be seen down all XtremIO front-end ports.
dynamox
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April 29th, 2015 19:00
any way to trick XIO, where one initiator is registered as if it were two different hosts allowing me to put it into two different initiator groups ?
hernster
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March 8th, 2017 08:00
Can someone explain why in the first diagram, Host 1 is zoned ONLY to X1? Why not zone to 4 ports - 1 on each available controller across the 2 bricks?
I know we have the option for 8 path zones across 2 bricks, but I am curious why we would only zone to 1 brick if 2 bricks are available.
Kumar_A
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March 8th, 2017 12:00
If you are referring to the diagram above (in this post), we have since updated the Host Configuration Guide to reflect what you asked - i.e. spread the connection between the two X-Bricks. Take a look at the latest version of the Host Configuration Guide on the Support website.
hernster
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March 8th, 2017 13:00
Avi - Thanks for your response.
FYI we have the zoning I described in our lab setup - 2 bricks, host zoned to 1 port on each of the 4 controllers, across 2 fabrics. or 4 total paths per host.
However, DellEMC recently ran a health check, and all initiators zoned in this manner came back with this warning..
".... does not comply with best practices."
So it appears that the "every initiator must connect to 2 ports on each controller" rule is enforced when DellEMC runs a health check, in spite of what you have explained and what we feel, as a customer, is a perfectly acceptable and certainly resilient host zoning configuration. Thoughts?