Help me design a UCS!

[khanasim781]

Hi Guys

Can someone help me with the best way of setting up a UCS environment?

I've uploaded a diagram of my proposed set up. (one thing the diagram doesnt show is the n5k's are connected to a 3750 stack)

The thing im worried about is the links between the FIC's and N5k's.  I plan on having 4 links between each FIC and N5k (so 8 in total).

My question is how should I set these links up?

2x ethernet 2x FC

4 x FCOE (will this be unified uplinks? can i do a port channel on the n5k?)

How have you done yours? what would you recommend?

Thanks!

[Marcin Latosiewicz]

Not going to tell you much on design, you should have a look at FlexPod CVDs and find something close to what you're trying to achieve, grow the scenario. 

A couple of things from experience

1) if you have a SAN network already, plug in you FI to MDSs over FC directly, don't go over N5k, adding additional hop, unless needed.

2) Use VPC between FIs and N5ks for data. 

3) You mentioned FCoE, but you already have a SAN network in the diagram. What is need, what is a want?

[khanasim781]

HI Marcin

Many thanks for the reply.

The idea of connecting the FI directly to the MDS switches never crossed my mind.

My initial plan was to send everything via the N5K's using FCoE so i'd have FC traffic and ethernet traffic going over the same ports.

I think splitting it up maybe the better option, FC traffic direct to the MDS and ethernet to the N5K's.

[Marcin Latosiewicz · Accepted solution]

The more scaled environments _I saw_ were indeed splitting Ether and Fibre networking. 

It also separates storage and networking portion of the network - quite important for some enterprises. 

In many environments the discussion ends up being about the bottom line rather than what one would deploy. 

FCoE, I think it solves a lot of problems, especially if properly deployed. However it does require that folks operating this network know FC _and_ Ether ... 

I'll just repeat what I said in my first response, have a look how flexpod/vblock/vspex etc deploy UCS with N5k and storage.