HP Matrix Operating Environment 7.3 and 7.3 Update 1 Logical Server Management User Guide

The Fibre Channel and network connections within an enclosure are hardwired through a midplane
which physically maps the blade’s Fibre Channel and network ports to the enclosure’s connection
bays on its backplane. (For detailed information on this mapping, see the HP BladeSystem c-Class
Enclosures documentation.)
Storage in a Virtual Connect environment
Storage in a Virtual Connect environment is often housed within storage area networks (SANs),
which are accessed through Fibre Channel connections. Using SAN storage has many advantages,
including allowing a seamless system failover from one server blade to another in the case of a
failure.
Figure 13 SAN storage
The endpoints in a Fibre Channel connection are called physical ports. Ports are uniquely identified
using assigned WWNs. This is similar to the way that MAC addresses uniquely identify Network
Interface Controllers (NICs). Server blades and SANs have ports through which they communicate
with the outside world. The general management of Fibre Channel communication is handled
through a FC switch within the context of a fabric.
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is an encapsulation of Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet
networks. With FCoE, network (IP) and storage (SAN) data traffic can be consolidated using a
single network switch. FCoE is useful in data centers because of the cabling reduction it makes
possible, as well as in server visualization, which often require many physical I/O connections
per server.
Administrator roles
The Virtual Connect storage environment illustrated in Figure 13 often requires at least two
administrator roles:
• The server administrator (or system administrator) manages the enclosure and all blades within
it.
• The storage administrator manages the SAN and all defined storage volumes within the SAN.
When requested by a server administrator, a storage administrator carves out volumes of a specified
size and type and provides access to these volumes. It is common to provide volume access only
to specific server side WWNs (FC ports), tightly controlling who can access the volume within a
highly shared environment. This process is called pre-presenting logical unit numbers (LUNs). (Note
that the LUN is specified during presentation, not the LUN UUID.)
Extending the administrator roles discussed above, responsibilities for managing logical servers
in Matrix OE are divided between the server administrator and the storage administrator.
• The server administrator is responsible for creating and managing logical servers, because
they represent servers with Virtual Connect.
• The storage administrator is responsible for creating and managing storage used by these
logical servers (and may use solutions such as HP Storage Provisioning Manager for automation
of volume creation, presentation, and SAN zoning).
44 Defining storage for logical servers