Setup Guide

Best Practices for Storage Connectivity

This chapter contains the following topics:

Topics:

• General SAN Guidelines

• Fibre Channel SAN Guidelines

• iSCSI SAN Guidelines

General SAN Guidelines

This section provides general guidelines for storage connectivity.

NOTE: This document describes mainly the storage-specific recommendations for PowerStore. It is recommended to

always consult with the OS documentation for the up-to-date guidelines specific for the used operating system.

NOTE: In hosts running a hypervisor, such as VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V or any clustering software, it is important

to ensure that the logical unit numbers of PowerStore volumes are consistent across all hosts in the hypervisor cluster.

Inconsistent LUNs may affect operations such as VM online migration or VM power-up.

Recommended Zoning Configurations

Consider these recommendations for zoning configuration:

● The optimal number of paths depends on the operating system and server information. To avoid multipathing performance

degradation, do not use more than 8 paths per device per host. It is recommended to use 4 paths.

● Keep a consistent link speed and duplex across all paths to the PowerStore cluster per single host or a cluster of hosts.

● With a multi-appliance cluster, it is highly advised to zone the host to as many appliances as possible, in order to achieve

best load distribution across the cluster. Make sure to keep the minimum/optimal zoning recommendations for each

appliance.

NOTE:

A multi-appliance cluster is not designed to provide better resiliency, but to provide better load balance. In order

to perform volume migration between appliances, a host must be zoned to both appliances.

Using LUN 0 with PowerStore

The PowerStore system exposes an SACD (Storage Array Controller Device) by default. The device is exposed with a LUN ID

#0. A user may choose to override the SACD with a real storage device (e.g. volume or clone) by setting the device LUN ID to

#0. Doing so may require the user to manually force a host re-scan to discover that device. For instructions on forcing a host

re-scan, refer to the OS vendor documentation.

8 Best Practices for Storage Connectivity