Plan for your external storage system configurations through iSCSI connections
with the system.
Use
the following guidelines to configure iSCSI-attached storage to the system:
- Unlike Fibre Channel connections, you need to manually configure the
connections between the source system and the target external storage systems.
- Discovery of the target IPs and session establishment is manually configured either I/O
group-wide (nodes from a specified I/O group discover and establish sessions) or system-wide (all
nodes discover and establish sessions).
- After
successful discovery, initiator sessions must be established from the source system to target
storage system manually through nodes in a specific I/O group or all nodes across the system.
- A
one-to-one mapping of source ports to target ports is required. The same numbered ports on each
source system or node connect to only one port on each target system or node. Multiple initiator
ports on the same system node cannot connect to the same target port (many-to-one connectivity).
Similarly one initiator port cannot be connected to multiple target ports on same target storage
system (one-to-many connectivity). The CLI command fails if such an attempt is made.
- Zoning is not required.
- Direct attachment between the system and external storage systems is not supported and requires
Ethernet switches between the system and the external storage.
- To avoid a single point of failure, a dual switch configuration is recommended. For full
redundancy, a minimum of two paths between each initiator node and target node must be configured
with each path going through a separate switch.
- Extra paths can be configured to increase throughput if both initiator and target nodes support
more ports.