Deployment Guide

10 Dell Networking FC Flex IOM: Deployment of FCoE with Dell FC Flex IOM, Brocade FC switches,
and Dell Compellent Storage Array
Deployment/Configuration Guide
4 Converged Network Solution – Dell PowerEdge
M1000e, Dell Compellent Storage Array, Brocade FC
Switch, and Dell MXL/IOA w/ FC Flex IO as NPIV Proxy
Gateway
This solution demonstrates network and infrastructure convergence via Dell MXL blade switch w/ FC
Flex IOM. The Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis consists of one Dell PowerEdge M620 Blade Server with
a 2-port Broadcom 57810 CNA and two Dell MXL blade switches each containing a FC Flex IO module.
The gray links in Figure 5 below represent the converged traffic. The convergence takes place within the
chassis and the MXL switch w/ FC Flex IOM breaks out the LAN and SAN traffic to the respective
backend LAN and SAN networks. Two Dell S6000s are used for upstream LAN switches and two
Brocade 6505 switches are used for the backend SAN. A Dell Compellent Storage Array is used for FC
storage and consists of one SC220 storage enclosure and two SC8000s with 4 x FC ports each.
In this example 40 GbE active fiber DACs are used from the 40GbE ports on the MXL to the 40 GbE
ports on the S6000, but 40 GbE copper DACs could also have been used. OM3 fiber and 8G FC optics
are used to connect the FC ports from the FC Flex IOM to the FC ports on the Brocade FC switches.
This solution provides redundancy for both the LAN and the SAN. The server sees two LAN connections
and two SAN connections via the 2-port CNA adapter. The Broadcom 57810 CNA is NIC teamed via
‘Smart Load Balancing and Failover’ and one port is made active while the other is made standby. In this
setup, it is also possible to add an additional 40 GbE or 10 GbE module to the MXLs and create a VLTi
link between them. Although a VLT LAG cannot be utilized down to the server CNA as FCoE is not
supported over a VLT lag, VLT can still be utilized up to the S6000s if desired. A VLTi link between the
MXLs can help speed-up failover as MAC/ARP tables are synced and addresses do not have to be
learned upon NIC failover; however, this is not required and will consume additional ports requiring the
need for an additional Flex I/O module. Also, it’s important to note that the FCoE traffic is unaffected by
the NIC team, and, in this setup, the mutipathing policy on the server is set to Round Robin so both
fabric A and fabric B are active and utilized.