FCoE direct connect to VNX5300 with no switch for zoning

[hangeles2]

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this or a similar setup. I cant find decent documentation to help us decide if this is a legitimate set up for a production environment of about 16 servers across 3 chassis. Our Cisco expert has never set up a UCS environment with a direct connection to the san via FCoE and is intuitively against it, especially since we do not plan to use a switch for zoning.  Is there any real danger in this? Will this be supported going forward?

[krun_shah]

Assuming your vnx has fcoe interface and you want to attach it directly to ucs fabric interconnect in this case the ucs fabric interconnect as san switch mode which will require zoning.

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[abbharga · Accepted solution]

Hi Henry,

If you look at the following document:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/interoperability/matrix/Matrix8.html

refer point number 3, the supported model for direct attach still requires an upstream MDS or N5k to provide zoning information.

./Abhinav

[Joseph Ristaino]

You can enable default zoning with direct attached storage in FC switching mode and this may resolve your issue however the best way to do it is to have an upstream FC switch.

Joey

[hangeles2]

Thanks for your help. Our main concern was not whether this would work without a switch, which it might, but whether Cisco will support that setup. The answer as far as I can tell is NO.

Thanks again.

[Joseph Ristaino]

The only supprted configuration is to have an MDS that can push zones to the fabric interconnects.

You can connect FCOE directly to the FI's but you must have an MDS to provide zoning.

You would need to make the MDS the active switch so it can push the config and then the FI's must be in FC switching mode.

This is supported.  But without an MDS it is not.

Hope this helps,

Joey

[steve554365]

Joseph, can you please confirm if this would work:

1. No MDS and no 5K

2. VNX5300 direct FCoE attached to 6248UP

3. FIs are in FC switch mode

4. FIs are not in Ethernet switching mode

5. Zoning is not needed, all hosts have access to all FC targets

Just want to be sure.

Follow up question. In this setup, is it correct that only FC will be available over VNC FCoE ports, and NAS won't be available? If we want NAS (iSCSI, NFS), then we would connect separate interfaces on VNX to the upstream Ethernet switches. I want to keep FI's in ethernet end-host mode.

[TremorAdmin]

Since the firmware has changed since the original post I was wondering if Direct Connect was still the same?

[edgar.morales]

Just thought I'd share my experience

I just finished setting up a VNX5300 via FCoE, directly connected to two 6248UP.  All the zoning was completed on the FIs with no upstream 5K or MDS Switches and all worked well.

[edgar.morales]

Hello Everyone,

I am also curious......can someone confirm if you can zone directly from the FIs if you are connected FCoE from VNX  direct to FIs without MDS or 5K.   

Current Setup

VNX5300 with 10GB FCoE IO Modules in each SP

2 x FI 6248UP

Running UCS Firmware 2.1

FC Switch mode enabled on both FIs

Thanks