Configuration details

Storage area network (SAN) configurations that contain nodes must be configured correctly.

SAN configuration and zoning rules summary
During normal operations in a Fibre Channel environment, systems are defined by supported configuration and zoning rules. If a single failure causes one or more of these rules to be invalidated, the configuration is still supported until the failure is corrected and the configuration is brought back into a normal supported mode.
Zoning details
Ensure that you are familiar with these zoning details. These details explain zoning for external storage system zones and host zones. More details are included in the SAN configuration and zoning rules summary.
Example SAN configurations
Examples of typical ways to configure your system and an associated Fibre Channel network are provided to guide you in setting up your SAN configuration.
External storage system configuration details (Fibre Channel)
Plan for your external storage system configurations through Fibre Channel connections with a node.
External storage system configuration details (iSCSI)
Plan for your external storage system configurations through iSCSI connections with the system.
Fibre Channel port masking
With Fibre Channel port masking, you control the use of Fibre Channel ports. You can control whether the ports are used to communicate to other nodes within the same local system, and if they are used to communicate to nodes in partnered systems. Fibre Channel port masking does not affect host or storage traffic. It gets applied only to node-to-node communications within a system and replication between systems.
Fibre Channel host bus adapter configuration details
Apply these configuration details to Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs).
Converged network adapter configuration details
Apply these system configuration details to converged network adapters (CNAs).
Fibre Channel SAN configuration details
Ethernet configuration details
The Ethernet-based hosts connect to the system through the node-to-node IP addresses. These can be assigned based off of the host attach functionality and port assignments of the node. Depending on your system configuration, Ethernet configurations can include iSCSI or NVMe over RDMA.
Node configuration details
Apply these configuration details to nodes to ensure that you have a valid configuration.
Configuration details for using RDMA-capable Ethernet ports for node-to-node communications
Before you configure a system to use RDMA-capable Ethernet ports for node-to-node communications, consider the following recommendations.
HyperSwap system configuration details
When used with HyperSwap® (copytype activeactive) relationships to create HyperSwap volumes, these configurations can be used to maintain access to data on the system when power failures or site-wide outages occur.
Configuring quorum
A quorum device is used to break a tie when a SAN fault occurs, when exactly half of the nodes that were previously a member of the system are present. A quorum device is also used to store a backup copy of important system configuration data. Just over 256 MB is reserved for this purpose on each quorum device.
Bitmap space configuration
As part of Copy Services, the system supports policy-based replication. If you are currently using Global Mirror consistency groups or relationships to replicate data between systems, you may need to reallocate bitmap space to use policy-based replication.
Comparison of mirroring methods
The information in the following table compares the various methods that you can use to mirror your volumes.

Parent topic: Configuring