How to connect emc VNX

[Kshitij Purwar]

Hi,

i have two nexus 5020 which is connected to old emc CX4-480 box and recently i got new VNX 5400 for my setup,please do let me know how should i connect this new box to my exiting setup.

should i create new zone for this  BOX or i should add it in the existing zone.only one vsan is active on each switch.

i want to deploy a setup where all hosts can see each lun from both the array.

should i also increase the number of fc connectivity between FI and nexus or 2 FC 8G port is sufficient.

Please help for this setup.

Thanks

kshitij

[dynamoxxx]

just connect VNX 5400 to the same VSAN on each fabric, create your device aliases/fc aliases ..zones and you should be in business. You can look at the ports on the 5020 and see how much traffic you are pushing through.  I have 3 VNX 5700 and one VMAX2 connecting to UCS using 2 FC uplinks per FI ..sufficient for my environment.

[Kshitij Purwar]

Thanks for reply.

should i create separate zone for new box.

i have port based zoning and have only one zone.

is this a best practice or i should re-frame it

[dynamoxxx]

port based zoning ? Why ?  Unless you have a specific reason i would switch to WWN based zoning (make sure to create device aliases).  And yes, i would create brand new zones for the new array.

[Kshitij Purwar]

Thanks for your help.

As i am beginner in storage world,so its my learning path for storage.

do you have any sample config for wwn based zoning or any relevant points which i should take care during config change.

Thanks

kshitij

[dynamoxxx]

i would just search for NX-OS admin/config guides.  Also download the VNX best practices guides from support.emc.com to make sure you connect and configure the array in supported/high availability manner.

[Kshitij Purwar]

Thank you all for helping me to understand this concept but i would like to ask a silly question here,as i read 2-3 docs and everywhere i found arrays are cross connected to nexus but nexus are not crossed connect to Fabric interconnect,need to understand the logic behind this,and as i go through suggested link and in few lines i found members in different zones can not access each other,so if i create three new zones for three different arrays how hosts  would communicate each other and would they can do live storage vMotion.

Thanks

kshitij

[Walter Dey]

see Fig 1 in 

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/storage-networking/mds-9500-series-multilayer-directors/white_paper_c11_586100.html

and replace MDS by N5k ! 

You see that FI-A is only connected to Fabric A, same for FI-B to Fabric-B; and storage is dual homed.

If you use N5k, the you would connect each FI to both N5k, and create a virtual port channel; but this is for Ethernet, not FC (FCoE).

[Kshitij Purwar]

what module should i purchase from EMC for fcoe.

AS per emc we can run FCOE on FC module of VNX.

[Walter Dey]

Hi

This is not true; FC and FCoE are different modules.

see VNX connectivity in

http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/specification-sheet/h8514-vnx-series-ss.pdf

[Walter Dey]

see eg

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/sw/5_2/configuration/guides/fabric/nx-os/nx_os_fabric/zone.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5989/prod_troubleshooting_guide_chapter09186a008067a309.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5989/products_configuration_guide_chapter09186a0080662d35.html