You can attach the SAN Volume Controller to
open-systems hosts with several methods.
You can use any of the following methods to attach
to open-systems hosts:
- The SAN Volume Controller to
Small Computer System Interface over Internet Protocol (iSCSI) hosts
using FCIP ports in your SAN fabric.
- The Small Computer System Interface-Fibre Channel Protocol (SCSI-FCP).
- The iSCSI hosts using the SAN Volume Controller Ethernet
ports.
Hosts that use the fibre-channel connections are attached
to the SAN Volume Controller through
a switched fibre-channel fabric. Each SAN Volume Controller node
has four ports, and each port is identified by a worldwide port name
(WWPN). The SAN Volume Controller port
limits are now shared between fibre-channel WWPNs and iSCSI names.
The SAN Volume Controller does
not limit the number of fibre-channel ports or host bus adapters (HBAs)
that each connected host or host partition can have. Your connected
hosts are limited only by the number of ports or HBAs that are supported
by the multipathing device driver on the host (or host partition).
The following IBM® Web
site provides current interoperability information about current support
information, including maximum configuration details, technical flashes, hints,
and tips, host systems, operating system levels, HBAs, cables, fabrics
that IBM supports,
and documentation about the SAN Volume Controller:
www.ibm.com/storage/support/2145
Note: iSCSI hosts that are attached with the FCIP ports
in the fabric are supported with SAN Volume Controller in
a nonfailover configuration. However, the multipathing support that
is available with iSCSI configurations does not necessarily provide
failover and path recovery for SAN fabric path changes or failures.
A concurrent upgrade to SAN Volume Controller can
cause errors on an iSCSI host that has multipathing enabled. If multipathing
is not configured on the iSCSI driver, you must configure your SAN
with only a single path from SAN Volume Controller to
the host. This result can be achieved by zoning a single SAN Volume Controller port
from each I/O group to the iSCSI host. In this configuration, a SAN Volume Controller upgrade
is disruptive to the host.