Direct Attached Storage to Fabric Interconnect for iSCSI?

[KVS7]

We have NetApp FCoE storage directly attached to our Fabric Interconnects which is the Cisco recommended method at least for smaller implementations based on port density. This reduces latency and reduces complexity as you don't need to perform zoning on the Nexus switches. However, when it comes to direct-attach for use with the iSCSI protocol, I can't find any information regarding this configuration. We will be using iSCSI SAN Boot and using iSCSI LUNs for data. Is anyone using iSCSI with their direct attached NetApp storage to FI?

[Kirk J · Accepted solution]

Your FI ports facing netapp iscsi ports, will just be configured as appliance ports.  Access vs Trunking config on appliance port will depend on your netapp appliance NIC config.

You do need to take into account if the netapp is tagging/expecting a specific QOS/COS value, MTU, etc.

If you want to boot to iSCSI, keep in mind you will need to mark the iSCSI vlan as native on the iSCSI vnic in the service profile.

We see customers fairly frequently attach iSCSI storage appliances directly to the FIs.

An iSCSI boot example doc is at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/ucs-manager/116003-iscsi-ucs-config-00.html   Don't let the date on the doc scare you   It should still apply to newer UCSM versions.

Kirk...

[KVS7]

Thanks Kirk, Cisco.U has a current iSCSI Boot lab so I'm not concerned about how to do it, just if it's supported by Cisco. I found one document from 2018 but it says that Appliance ports only support trunks/access ports and not vPCs which is how I'm cabled. I guess leaving as is good enough. We're going to keep storage attached to the leaf switch because it's already cabled in a vPC and there's no further instructions or caveats to it.