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Friday, January 7, 2011

Direct Attached FC Storage with UCS

Cisco has released the new code release (1.4.1j). I had the chance of setting up one of the newest features included in this code release which is configuring direct attached storage from an EMC storage array directly to UCS 6120XP fabric interconnects. The process was not that difficult but there were some configurations that had to be played with to make this work properly for Boot from SAN connectivity that I have not dealt with for previous configurations with Storage connected via a fabric switch. Here are the steps we used to make this work:

UCS configuration:
  1. Connect the FC storage to the FC expansion modules on the UCS 6120xp
  2. In the UCS Manager, select a interconnect and in the general tab in the right pane select “Set FC Switching Mode”. Note: This will cause the Fabric Interconnects to reboot.
  3. Once the UCS Manager is back online, select one of the Fabric Interconnects, then on the General tab in the right window, right click the desired FC ports of FC Expansion module and select “Configure as FC Storage Port” in the drop down
  4. On the default VSAN, select “Enable Default Zoning. This allows the 6100 to communicate with the storage and vice versa for sharing the WWPN of devices.
  5. Next, configure the boot policy for the host.
In the boot policy:
  1. Create a CDROm and set it as Order 1
  2. Create a Storage object
  3. Create a SAN Primary Storage object with SAN Target Primary with the WWPN of SPA and LUN ID of 0(zero); then create a SAN Target Secondary with the WWPN of SPB and LUN ID of 0
  4. Create a SAN Secondary Storage object with SAN Target Primary with the WWPN of the SPA and LUN ID of 0; then create a SAN Target Secondary with the WWPN of SPB and LUN ID of 0
Once these steps are completed make sure that your LUNs on the storage device are configured for the WWPN of the virtual HBAs in your Server Service Profile and then test connectivity.





14 comments:

Mohit said...

in step 5 what do you mean by configure the boot lun first??

Harold Simon said...

Sorry that was a typo, I have corrected the line.

Peter said...

I need help on getting the HBA registered with EMC not ablke to find the option

Harold Simon said...

peter,

sorry, just now seeing this. are you still having the issue?

Harold

Peter said...

Hi,The issue got resolved as it was an EMC initiator that had problems

Peter said...

I would like to understand as I do not have a SAN switch in between how do I prevent my individual Servers from seeing LUNS mapped to other serversa

Harold Simon said...

Peter,

Sorry for being late again! You may have figured this out by now, but that come down to LUN masking on the SAN(EMC, Netapp, etc.). Only group the host(s) with the LUN that you want them to see on the storage.

If you are using VMware you can Mask the path from the ESX host, but Masking from the SAN is the preferred method.

Harold

August.B said...

Thanks so much for taking the time to document all of this. You're a rockstar in this datacenter!

August.B said...

Thanks so much for taking the time to document all of this. You're a rockstar in this datacenter!

Harold Simon said...

August,

You're welcome, and thank you for commenting!

JP said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JP said...

My SPs both A and B dont have a WWPN so i was wondering if i can use the Storage System WWN? I am trying to link a Clariion X3-10c into my UCS environment. Right now we already have a Clariion AX4 linked in but i wasn't here when that was integrated.

Harold Simon said...

I have not used that Model of EMC storage before. Have you tried connecting the array to the FIs and then seeing if the array was able to detect the WWPNs from the UCS blades?

Unknown said...

I've been meaning to get a better data storage device to hold all of my files. Perhaps a direct attach storage device might be a good pick? The last storage device I used didn't hold my files after I saved them.
http://www.broadberry.com/das-direct-attached-storage-servers