Node configuration details

Host bus adapters and node canisters

Each of the FlashSystem 7300 node canisters feature the optional adapters that are shown in this table.

Table 1. Host interface adapters
Supported number of adapters	Ports	Protocol	Possible slots
0-2	4	32 Gb Fibre Channel	1,2
0-2	4	16 Gb Fibre Channel	1,2
0-2	2	25 Gb Ethernet (iWARP)	1,2
0-2	2	25 Gb Ethernet (RoCE)	1,2
0-3	2	100 Gb Ethernet (RoCE)	Slot 1- Cage 1 left Slot 5- Cage 2 left Slot 7- Cage 3 left
0-1 in slot 1 only	2 (4-port adapter but only 2 ports are active.)	12 Gb SAS Expansion	1

The SAS expansion adapter is required to use 4657-24G or 4657-92G expansion enclosures. The 25 Gb adapters support iSCSI host attachment.

Note: For release 8.5.0, iSCSI performance for 100 Gbps ports will be limited to that of 25 Gbps ports.

FlashSystem 7300 node canisters also contain two USB ports and the on-board Ethernet ports shown in this table.

Table 2. On-board Ethernet ports
On-board Ethernet port	Speed	Functions
1	10 GbE	Management IP, Service IP, Host I/O
2	10 GbE	Secondary Management IP, Host I/O
3	10 GbE	Host I/O
4	10 GbE	Host I/O
	1 GbE	Technician Port - DHCP/DNS for direct attach service management

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is not supported.

For information about supported hardware, see the following website: www.ibm.com/support.

Volumes

Each volume is accessible from the two nodes in an I/O group. Each host network port can recognize up to eight paths to each logical unit (LU) that is presented by the system. The hosts must run a multipathing device driver before the multiple paths can resolve to a single device. You can use fabric zoning, VLANs, or port masking to reduce the number of paths to a volume that are visible by the host. The network port types are Ethernet (iSCSI), Fibre Channel, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet.

Optical connections

Valid optical connections are based on the fabric rules that the manufacturers impose for the following connection methods:

Host to a switch
Back end to a switch.
Inter-switch links (ISLs)

Optical fiber connections can be used between a node and its switches.

Systems that use the intersystem Metro Mirror and Global Mirror functions can use optical fiber connections between the switches, or they can use distance-extender technology that is supported by the switch manufacturer.

Fibre Channel connection

The system supports shortwave and longwave Fibre Channel connections between nodes and the switches to which they are connected by using the 16 Gbps and 32 Gbps Fibre Channel adapter.

No ISL hops are permitted among the nodes within the same I/O group. However, no more than three ISL hops are permitted among nodes that are in the same system though different I/O groups. If your configuration requires more than three ISL hops for nodes that are in the same system but in different I/O groups, contact your support center.

Avoid communication between nodes and storage systems that are being routed across ISLs. To do so, connect all storage systems to the same Fibre Channel or FCF switches as the nodes. One ISL hop between the nodes and the storage systems is permitted. If your configuration requires more than one ISL, contact your support center.

In larger configurations, it is common to have ISLs between host systems and the nodes.