UCS FI and iSCSI Storage

[cowetacoit]

We're getting ready to implement a UCS B Series. I have a question about the 6248UP FI. I've read and used the emulator for UCS Manager and noticed you can configure FI ports as Appliance ports for storage. Is this limited to a certain storage protocol or vendor? We use Dell EQ and plan to connect the EQ 6510X to it. Just wondering if that is supported and if upstream iSCSI traffic would be able to access the storage?

The 6248UPs will be uplinked to a pair of Catalyst 4506-E running VSS. We have a IBM blade chassis and the servers would need to be able to access the EQ6510X too. I'm assuming i just need to trunk the iSCSI VLAN to the 6248UP and the servers would have access?      

Thanks!

[Manuel Velasco · Accepted solution]

Hi Cowetac,

Yes, not all storage arrays are supported by UCS, but your DELL Equalogic is supported. If you have any questions about other storage arrays compatibility, you can take a look at the UCS Storage Interoperability Matrix (See Link Below).

UCS Storage Interoperability Matrix (Table 10-2     UCS-B Storage Support Matrix)

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

I'm assuming i just need to trunk the iSCSI VLAN to the 6248UP and the servers would have access?      

Depends, if you are going to use t an appliance port on UCS to connect directly to the storage, you can only use a single vlan.

if you are connecting via the Ethernet uplinks through a switch, then you would have to set your switchs port as a trunk. 

[cowetacoit]

Thanks for the reply. When i meant by trunking is if the EQ array is plugged into the FI Applicance port and i want upstream devices to access the array then i would need to trunk the vlan it resides on from the FI to the collapsed Core? Thats where the SVI will be located anyway.

[Manuel Velasco]

Yes, it is correct

[Manuel Velasco]

Cowtacoit,

Also, If we have answered your questions, please accecpt the solution so other people don't keep replying to this post.

Have a good day