Direct Connect a VMAX directly to Interconnect Switches

[Kevin Williamson]

We have recently purchased a VMAX 450F(All Flash Array) and would like to be directly connected to 9248 Interconnect Switches so we won't need our MDS 9148 switches anymore.   All of the servers that we will have on the SAN will UCS managed servers.    Each director has 4 ports.  I know since UCS manager 2.1,  direct attached storage has been supported, but I haven't seen anything mentioned about Enterprise Grade SANs like a VMAX.  Has anyone connected a FC storage array directly to their interconnects?

[Qiese Dides]

Hi Kevin,

If you look at the link below, you can reference Table 10-2 UCS-B Storage Support Matrix and this shows that VMAX for EMC is supported for direct attach storage with the Fabric Interconnect.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/interoperability/matrix/intmatrx/Matrix8.html#wp323848

You would need to operate the FI in switching mode if you do not want to use a switch. A great guide on this is below:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/ucs-infrastructure-ucs-manager-software/116082-config-ucs-das-00.html

Hope this helps and answers your questions.

Qiese Dides

[Walter Dey]

Hi Kevin

My 2c

I would never do this ! 

The use case for direct storage attachment is: lab setup, SMB installation. Simply to avoid CAPEX of FC switches.

Caveats:

- The FC switch implementation on the FI has not 100% identical features as SAN-OS (MDS, N5k); I covered this in a earlier note !

- if you suddently need a connection to a SAN, only Cisco switches are supported, not e.g. Brocade

- Probably 95+ of all UCS installations are using FC end host mode

I had a huge UCS customer, where we had to migrate direct attached storage to SAN storage; main reason: SAN folks didn't want a additional, not 100% compliant SAN-OS switch in their fabric.

Walter.

[Kevin Williamson]

Qiese,

Thanks for links.  I am surprised that the first link doesn't mention firmware 2.1 or higher.  I imagine it hasn't been updated in a while. 

Walter,

Your point is well taken about most environments being in end host mode.  I'm just finding out what is doable,  as our MDS seems to be at the end of getting updates in a few months.  I'm thinking of doing it in DR site as well.  I'm not quite sure about the limiting feature sets, being the only thing we use is alias, defining zones.  We will never go to Brocade switches,  its a long rant from way back when they bought out McData and their lack of support.  The MDS switches are pretty solid, the Java GUI needs to be replaced.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/storage-networking/mds-9100-series-multilayer-fabric-switches/eos-eol-notice-c51-734274.html

[Walter Dey]

Kevin

The following features are not supported in FI FC Switching mode:

- only basic zoning ! no enhanced zoning

- no support of static domain id's

Walter.