Host attachment

This topic describes configuration activities to enable hosts to access volumes and use host-based solutions to manage the storage system.

The IBM® Storage FlashSystem and IBM SAN Volume Controller product family supports the following protocols for host attachment:
  • Fibre Channel
  • NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe)
  • NVMe over RDMA
  • NVMe over TCP
  • Serial-attached SCSI (SAS)
  • Ethernet iSCSI
  • Small Computer System Interface-Fibre Channel (SCSI-FCP)
Refer to the System overview page of the product hardware documentation to determine which protocols are supported on each hardware configuration.

For more information about host compatibility, see IBM System Storage Interoperation Center (SSIC).

Hosts that use the Fibre Channel connections are attached to the system either directly or through a switched Fibre Channel fabric. Each port on a node is identified by a worldwide port name (WWPN).

Host connections through NVMe over RDMA use specialized network switches and require fewer resources than FC-NVMe. RDMA allows higher throughput and better performance with low latency. In addition, RDMA requires less expertise at the storage networking level than the Fibre Channel implementation, potentially reducing overall costs.

The advantage of using NVMe over TCP data transfer is that unlike RDMA data transfer, NVMe over TCP uses the existing Ethernet adapters on the host and network infrastructure.

Refer to the following pages for information about host configuration.