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Dell Storage Center SCv2000 and SCv2020 Storage System Deployment Guide

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Two Fibre Channel Fabrics with a Single 8 Gb 4-Port Storage Controller

Use two Fibre Channel (FC) fabrics to prevent an unavailable port or switch from causing a loss of connectivity between the host servers and a storage system with a single 8 Gb 4-port storage controller .

About this task

This configuration includes two fault domains, two FC fabrics, and two FC switches. The storage controller connects to each FC switch using two FC connections.
  • If a physical port becomes unavailable, the virtual port moves to another physical port in the same fault domain on the storage controller .
  • If an FC switch becomes unavailable, the storage system is accessed from the switch in the other fault domain.
  • NOTE: This configuration is vulnerable to storage controller unavailability, which results in a loss of connectivity between the host servers and the storage system.

Steps

  1. Connect each server to both FC fabrics.
  2. Connect fault domain 1 (shown in orange) to fabric 1.
    • Storage controller 1: port 1 → FC switch 1
    • Storage controller 1: port 3 → FC switch 1
  3. Connect fault domain 2 (shown in blue) to fabric 2.
    • Storage controller 1: port 2 → FC switch 2
    • Storage controller 1: port 4 → FC switch 2

Example

Figure 1. Storage System with a Single 8 Gb Storage Controller and Two FC Switches Storage system with a single four-port storage controller connected to host servers through two switches.
  1. Server 1
  2. Server 2
  3. FC switch 1 (fault domain 1)
  4. FC switch 2 (fault domain 2)
  5. Storage system
  6. Storage controller 1

Next steps

Install or enable MPIO on the host servers.
  • NOTE: After the Storage Center configuration is complete, run the host access wizard to configure host server access and apply MPIO best practices. For the latest best practices, see the Dell Storage Center Best Practices document on the Dell TechCenter site ( http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/).

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