UCS FCoE over Port Channels

[ksherwood]

Hello experts,

                     we have just started an implementation of UCS using 2 x 6248 and 2 x 5020 (VPCed) and fully meshed with port channel links.

I just need some advice on the little things, as although appearing quite straight forward when you know what to do, I need some help to get there

I want to use dedicated FCoE links later but haven't got enough SFPs as yet, so I'm integrating LAN and SAN traffic over common links for now.

So my first question is, is this feasible ?

I would appreciate any helpful comments.

Kevin.

[davidng]

Hi Kevin,

Converged links for Eth and FCoE is supported but you still need to follow SAN A/B separation and vPC will break that.  So there are 2 options:

Option 1:

If 1 10G FCOE is enough for your storage, then keep the current physical connections and remove the vPC configuration.  For ethernet traffic, the UCS FI will dynamic to distribute the vNIC between the 2 uplinks.  For the FCOE, you will need to choose one of the link for the FCOE.

Option 2:

If 1 10G FCOE is not enough, then this exercise is more intrusive and requires some down time.  It requires unconfiguring the vPC connection and recabling.  The UCS to N5K needs to be single-homed.  From there, configure for eth/FCOE and port-channeling.

HTH,

David Nguyen

[ksherwood · Accepted solution]

Thanks David, I now understand that you can't run FcoE and Ethernet over a vPC, but I don't want to lose redundancy with my Ethernet links. So I will keep the cross meshed connections for pure Ethernet and run two more straight up links for FCoE.

Eventually I will run extra straight up links and port channel these for FCoE uplink redundancy too. This being the ideal and best practice setup. I just didn't have enough SFPs to do this up front. I have just snaffled 4 more SFPs to do the 2 FCoE links now.

My Storage links are FCoE too as I don't want to use direct FC:

Ans:  I needed to configure zoning on both of the N5Ks...after I did this the LUN was available on our SAN

Kevin.