port channel on MDS9148

[Evan Ray]

Are you able to create a port-channel on a MDS9148 to increase the banbwidth for storage?  I've Googled around a bit, and it seems like most of the port channel configuration are for switch to switch trunking.  We are looking to create a port-channel to connect to our EMC XtremIO and our Hyper-V hosts.

Cheers, 

[dynamoxxx]

port-channel is for switch to switch communication (FC world) . XtremIO (nor VNX/VMAX) know nothing about port-channels.  Where is the bottleneck ?  HBAs on host or Xbrick ports ?

[Evan Ray]

heya dynamoxxx!

I'm still looking into the possibility of a bottleneck, but the reason for my concern was I'm attaching multiple volumes to a host.  So I thought am I going to oversubscribe that port?  If I have 4 volumes that are hard hitting, I am no longer providing a dedicated 8Gbps port.  Is that wrong thinking?  I'm pretty new to the fiber world, so I still have some reading to do.  I just wanted to voice my conern on the forums and hope for some direction.

Also, what's a good way to see if you are overloading the port?  I was thinking to connect my MDS to my Observium server, that way I can get a better idea of what's going on.

[dynamoxxx]

if you want to look at real time, you can simply right click on an MDS port that your Xbricks are connected to, select monitor ..and watch real time utilization. If you need historical data and you have MDS fabric manager lisense, you can use DCNM to look at past statistics.

Another option is to look in XMS, under Reports you can select Cluster Bandwidth.  It does not break it down by Xbrick/port but gives you an overall picture.

When you say "hard hitting" , what are we talking about ? Did you look at those volume performance in XMS ?  Generating a lot of small block I/O does not consume a lot of bandwidth.

[Evan Ray]

You are definitely a storage guy dynamoxxx, aren't you?  Looks like also an EMC guy too?  This is why I love the forums, you come here and learn!  Thank you!!!

When I say hard hitting, I'm referring to heavy load SQL servers.  TBH I haven't spent much time in the XMS server.  I need to poke around a little more.  It's kind of all rushing through like water through a small canel.  So much to learn, and so much to absorb.  I've chosen to do everything by myself, so making gains little by little. 

I've gotten the storage connected, and data copying over as you can already tell.  Along with the XMS server up and running, as that's needed for our Hyper-V environment.  I still have RecoverPoint sitting to be setup.  But I wanted to make sure we are solid on the setup, and performance is flowing.  I can already see some serious performance, but I just didn't want to hinder any performance with a setup misstep. 

[dynamoxxx]

tell me more about your configuration. How many Hyper-V servers, How many Xbricks ? ? 

Use XMS Evan, specifically the reporting feature is really nice. It gives you real time stats (iops/througput/latency) on per volume basis.

[Evan Ray]

Currently we have 2 Hyper-V host servers and 1 Xbrick.  We are using a Cisco MDS 9148 switch w/ 8G fiber connectivity.

I'm firing up the XMS login now and poking around. 

[dynamoxxx]

i would be amazed if your two Hyper-V boxes are maxing out one Xbrick/FC ports. What do you see in XMS on the Dashboard, specifically Bandwidth and IOPS tabs.

[Evan Ray]

I might be over thinking this, so these stats will come in handy.  And here's what we got...

Bandwidth 12,500 MB/s

IOPs - 3,200

Pretty low, if hardly any especially for IOPs, but we still haven't run the big boys.  We are having some issues with corruption from our old SAN and creating/transferring those virtual machines over to the XIO.

Thanks for the direction to the reporting, that helps a lot.  I'm in the process now of installing DCNM and getting the device manager up for the MDS switch to get some numbers. Thanks again!!

[Evan Ray]

I must be missing something, but I don't see how I can access the MDS port.  How do I access the MDS switch GUI?

[dynamoxxx]

DCNM Device manager 

[Evan Ray]

I'm having so many issues getting DCNM Device Manager installed.  First it was Java issues, so I finally found a older version.  Now it giving me an unexpected error, and looks like it wants XP OS and I have Windows 7.

[dynamoxxx]

Disable UAC in windows 7, reboot and try again with the latest version of DCNM.

[Evan Ray]

Seriously?  It was UAC causing the problem?  Wow!!  Yup that surely fixed it, I got it up and running now.  I finally have a bird eyes view of the MDS, from a GUI perspective.

Thank you very much dynamoxxx!!!!!!!!!!