Boot policies and Multiple SAN Controllers

Jaywoo · ‎04-24-2018

How are people managing their boot policies when dealing with SAN units with more than two controllers?

I have B200 M4/M5 blades with storage on HP 3PARs. Unfortunately, a separate team manages the storage. The 3PARs each have (4) controllers with (4) ports on each controller. The team manually balances the WWPNs of the hosts across the controllers by assigning two ports on two controllers at a time.

For example,

zoning assignment #1:

vHBA1 --> CTRL1(Port1) --> CTRL3(Port1)

vHBA2 --> CTRL2(Port2) --> CTRL4(Port2)

OR, zoning assignment #2:

vHBA1 --> CTRL1(Port3) --> CTRL3(Port4)

vHBA2 --> CTRL2(Port4) --> CTRL4(Port2)

I thought to simply create 4 policies. However, there's no consistency on the storage teams part! Some assignments have Ports1 & 3 and Ports3 & 2. It's crazy! This makes using a consistent Boot Policy impossible! Each blade will have it's own unique policy.

Honestly, I know this is poor SAN management. I also know that I have an internal problem here and a discussion with that team needs to occur.

But, from a UCS perspective, is there a way around this?

-Jay

Kirk J · ‎04-24-2018

Greetings.

You can specify a max of 2 vHBAs, each with a primary and 2ndary boot wwpn target, for a total of 4 targets.

Sounds like you need to create a few sets of boot polices, each to represent different sets of wwpn targets, and spread the targets among the blades.

Sounds like storage team is going to need to help organize these into standard groupings so you have a few different storage profiles you round robin through.

Thanks,

Kirk...

Jaywoo · ‎04-24-2018

@Kirk J wrote:

You can specify a max of 2 vHBAs, each with a primary and 2ndary boot wwpn target, for a total of 4 targets.

Yes, this I'm aware of and am fine with. I was actually wondering is there a way to add additional targets beyond the total of 4, maybe via CLI?

Sounds like you need to create a few sets of boot polices, each to represent different sets of wwpn targets, and spread the targets among the blades.

This is exactly what I'm doing. It's currently 1:1 ratio.

Sounds like there's no UCS-based method to resolving my issue.