IBM Fusion Access for SAN

Use the information to get an understanding of the IBM Fusion Access for Storage Area Network (SAN) solution.

IBM Fusion Access for SAN is a solution that provides a scalable clustered file system for enterprise storage, primarily designed to offer access to consolidated, block-level data storage. It presents storage devices, such as disk arrays, to the operating system as if they were direct-attached storage.

This solution supports toward enterprise storage for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and uses existing SAN infrastructure. A SAN is a dedicated network of storage devices that is not accessible through the local area network (LAN).

Key benefits

Easy user experience
IBM Fusion Access for SAN features a wizard-driven user interface to install and configure storage clusters, file systems, and storage classes, to simplify the setup process.
Use existing infrastructure
You can use their existing SAN investments, including Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI technologies, as they transition to or expand with OpenShift® Virtualization.
Scalability
The storage cluster is designed to scale with OpenShift Container Platform clusters and virtual machine workloads. It can support up to approximately 3000 VMs on 6 bare-metal hosts, with possibilities for further scaling by adding more file systems or using specific storage class parameters.
Consolidated and shared storage
SANs enable multiple servers to access a large, shared data storage capacity. This architecture facilitates automatic data backup and monitors the storage and backup processes continuously.
High-speed data transfer
By using a dedicated high-speed network for storage, IBM Fusion Access for SAN overcomes the data transfer bottlenecks that can occur over a traditional LAN, especially for large volumes of data.
File-level access
Although a SAN primarily operates at the block level, file systems that are built on top of SAN storage can provide file-level access through shared-disk file systems.
Centralized management
The underlying SAN software manages servers, storage devices, and the network to ensure that data moves directly between storage devices with minimal server intervention. It also supports centralized management and configuration of SAN components like Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs).

Prerequisites and limitations

Prerequisites
Prerequisites to install and configure IBM Fusion Access for SAN:
  • Bare-metal worker nodes with attached SAN storage
  • A working container registry enabled
  • All worker nodes must connect to the same LUNs

    A shared LUN is a shared disk that is accessed by all worker nodes simultaneously.

  • A Kubernetes pull secret
Limitations
  • Limitations for IBM Fusion Access for SAN rely on the IBM Storage Scale Container Native limitations and can be found in the documentation for IBM Storage Scale container native.
  • Hosted Control Plane clusters are not supported.