HP StoreOnce B6200 Installation Planning and Preparation Guide (EJ022-90995, November 2013)

4 Fibre Channel connection

The physical FC connection to the HP B6200 Backup System is straightforward; there are four FC

ports per node. However, care must be taken to ensure there is no single point of failure in switch

or fabric zoning that will negate the failover capabilities of the HP B6200 Backup System and its

autonomic restart ability.

NOTE: Only two ports are available when using software revisions prior to 3.9.0. Upgrading

to 3.9.0 or greater, will automatically give you functionality to use all four ports.

Conformance to the following rules will help to ensure successful failover

• Fibre Channel switches used with HP StoreOnce must support NPIV. The preferred topology

uses NPIV (N_Port ID Virtualisation) Direct attach (private loop) and direct attach (point to

point) topologies are not supported. For a full list see http://www.hp.com/go/ebs.

• Use WWPN zoning (rather than port based). This keeps the backup/restore environment

simple and less susceptible to the effects of changing or problematic SANs.

• Ensure that there are two switches in each fabric.

• In a single fabric configuration ensure the equivalent FC ports from each B6200 node in a

couplet are presented to the same FC switch.

• In a dual fabric configuration ensure the equivalent FC ports from each B6200 node in a

couplet are presented to the same fabric. They should present to separate switches within the

fabric.

• Ensure the D2D diagnostic device WWNs (these will be seen in the switch name server and

are associated with the physical ports) are not included in any fabric zones and, therefore,

not presented to any hosts.

Please see the HP B6200 Backup System Recommended Configuration Guidelines for further

information and configuration examples.

Connecting the Fibre Channel cables (optional)

If VTL library emulation is required, the FC cables are connected to the FC ports: the example

shows FC port 1 and FC port 2 in use on each node.

NOTE: Only the two ports shown on the illustration below are available when using software

revisions prior to 3.9.0.

Figure 12 Fibre Channel cabling to each node

Identified as FC Port 1 on the StoreOnce GUI1.

Identified as FC Port 2 on the StoreOnce GUI2.

Unused FC ports

NOTE: These ports may be used with StoreOnce software v3.9.0 and later.

22 Fibre Channel connection