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Ways to configure FC & FC-NVMe SAN hosts

Contributors netapp-cgoff netapp-dbagwell
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It is recommended that you configure your FC and FC-NVMe SAN hosts using HA pairs and a minimum of two switches. This provides redundancy at the fabric and storage system layers to support fault tolerance and nondisruptive operations. You cannot directly attach FC or FC-NVMe SAN hosts to HA pairs without using a switch.

Cascade, partial mesh, full mesh, core-edge, and director fabrics are all industry-standard methods of connecting FC switches to a fabric, and all are supported. The use of heterogeneous FC switch fabrics is not supported, except in the case of embedded blade switches. Specific exceptions are listed on the Interoperability Matrix Tool. A fabric can consist of one or multiple switches, and the storage controllers can be connected to multiple switches.

Multiple hosts, using different operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, or UNIX, can access the storage controllers at the same time. Hosts require that a supported multipathing solution be installed and configured. Supported operating systems and multipathing solutions can be verified on the Interoperability Matrix Tool.

Multifabric FC and FC-NVMe configurations

In multifabric HA pair configurations, there are two or more switches connecting HA pairs to one or more hosts. For simplicity, the following multifabric HA pair figure shows only two fabrics, but you can have two or more fabrics in any multifabric configuration.

The FC target port numbers (0c, 0d, 1a, 1b) in the illustrations are examples. The actual port numbers vary depending on the model of your storage node and whether you are using expansion adapters.

multifabric HA pair diagram

Single-fabric FC and FC-NVMe configurations

In single-fabric HA pair configurations, there is one fabric connecting both controllers in the HA pair to one or more hosts. Because the hosts and controllers are connected through a single switch, single-fabric HA pair configurations are not fully redundant.

The FC target port numbers (0a, 0c) in the illustrations are examples. The actual port numbers vary depending on the model of your storage node and whether you are using expansion adapters.

All platforms that support FC configurations support single-fabric HA pair configurations.

single switch fabric HA pair diagram
Note

Single-node configurations are not recommended because they do not provide the redundancy needed to support fault tolerance and nondisruptive operations.
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