FCoE direct attach design options

[simon.geary]

Hi community, looking for some feedback on design options for directly connecting a NetApp array to UCS using FCoE storage ports.

The NetApp is configured as a metrocluster and has the Unified Target Adapters.

MDS switches are available for zoning.

Looking for feedback on design of the physical connectivity between the two NetApp controllers and two fabric interconnects.

Option 1

Connect NetApp A to Fabric Interconnect A

Connect NetApp B to Fabric Interconnect B

Option 2

Connect NetApp A to Fabric Interconnect A

Connect NetApp A to Fabric Interconnect B

Connect NetApp B to Fabric Interconnect A

Connect NetApp B to Fabric Interconnect B

I'm considering option 1 at the moment. There seems to be no single point of failure even though each vHBA only has a path to a single controller, assuming ESX will handle path failover. Does that sound correct?

Is there a third option I have overlooked, or a better way to do the physical cabling?

Finally, are there any reference guides available for this scenario? Everything I see on the internet assumes you will have some Nexus or MDS in the middle. Not much goodness out there for direct connect scenarios.

Thanks

[richard.pugh]

This is from NetApp:

NetApp Unified Target Adapter support with UCS

With Cisco UCS B-Series firmware release 1.4(x), Cisco supports directly attaching FCoE target ports and Ethernet/NAS (appliance) ports to a UCS B-Series 6100 Fabric Interconnect by configuring the UCS 6100 Fabric Interconnect in FC Switching Mode or Ethernet Switching Mode. NetApp also supports this feature with the following caveat:

If the direct connection from the NetApp controller to the Cisco UCS B-Series 6100 Fabric Interconnect is from a NetApp Unified Target Adapter (UTA), each port connected to the 6100 Fabric Interconnect from the UTA can only be configured for FCoE or NAS (appliance) access, but not for unified (or multi-protocol) access. This is due to the lack of support in current Cisco UCS firmware release for configuring a port on the 6100 Fabric Interconnect for use with multiple protocols.

If the connections from the NetApp UTA to the UCS 6100 B-Series Fabric Interconnect are not direct, but upstream on a Cisco Nexus switch, then this restriction does not apply and multi-protocol access is supported.

The above can be found here -->

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/adapters/CiscoUCS.pdf

[simon.geary]

Thanks Richard. I'm aware of that doc and the caveat does not apply in this case as I'd only be using the UTA port for FCoE. Different ports on the filer will serve up IP protocols. What I needed some clarification on was the physical cabling between the filers and the fabric interconnects.

[Jeremy Waldrop]

Simon, I did a similar setup recently with UTA cards going to a Nexus 5548. Not exactly the same but it may help you. In our design we went with option 2. Take a look at the attached diagram.