Does Fibre Channel SAN rely on IP network?

[c3174094]

Can anyone tell me if an IP network is required to support a SAN network. In other words, do the SAN switches need to communicate with each other using any IP protocols such as SNMP. We are having a problem where none of the server can not detect any LUNs on the SAN.

The IP management interfaces of the two FC switches are on different networks separated by a firewall. We believe that there needs to be some communication for example to pass VSAN info from one switch to another.

Server -> Cisco 9100 FC Switch -> Cisco 9500 FC Switch -> Storage Array

Thanks

 

[p5wizard]

I have no experience with VSANs, but I'd very much doubt it. All SAN traffic (data or other) is handled "in band" (i.e. over the FC connections). Your SAN fabric shouldn't have to rely on some external IP network trough ONE mgmt port. Note that it would introduce a single point of failure in every SAN switch.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[chgwhat]

Are the 2 switches connected by fibre, or is it fcip ? If they are connected by fibre, they will use that to pass vsan info, can you verify the switches can see each other ?

Tony ... aka chgwhat

When in doubt,,, Power out...

 

[c3174094]

It is fibre, not fcip , or iSCSI, etc. I believe the switches can see each other. The server is actually an IBM blade server in a IBM blade chassis. BOFM/AAM and a Cisco Fabric switch is used in the Blade chassis. The Cisco Fabric switch is connected to an external Cisco Fabric Switch which is in turn connected to the storage device. The Qlogic interface on the blade server can not detect the LUN.

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

Be sure to put the correct port type on your switch port when connecting them together (L-port, F-port,E-port).
If the server is not able to see the luns, following things can cause this:
- defective hba ( did you check if the server correctly logs in to the fiber switch to which it is connected ? )
- zoning issue (typo in the wwpn or alias)
- storage array config issue ( igroup issue )

rgds,

R.

NetApp Certified NCDA/NCIE-SAN

 

[samtaf]

First of all, Fabric Switches use Fiber Channel protocol to communicate not IP. IP is only used for out-of-band management. Your Fabric switches use ISL (Inter Switch Link) to physically connecet using E_Port. If you configure it with the right port type, which is E_Port and full rate band width, it works fine.
SAN switches never use IP to communicate. they rather use FCP when connected as ISL configured with E-Ports.

 

[samtaf]

If you want to make two Fabrics talk to each other for, lets say, mirroring purposes, you need to have FCIP (Fiber Channel over IP), a protocol that transport FC over IP network. Its a regular IP network but on the switch, you may have to have a gE SFPs to translate the protocols.

 

[samtaf]

Ok, I saw your other note that the hosts are Blade Centers. In that case, your Blade Center uses a Qlogic Intellegent-Pass-Thru switch module on the chassis to internally map the servers HBAs to the switches. The purpose of this module is to virtualise ports and map them to Fabric switches physical ports. So, for the Fabric switches to understand virtualized wwpns are mapped to a port, a feature called NPIV (Node-Port-ID-Virtualization) has to be enabled. if its a Cisco switch, just type config t on the command prompt, and you get a prompt, then type "npiv enable" without the quote. You have to enable npiv in order Blade center servers to login the fabric switches. . then you can run the command, show flogi database to see the B.Centers HBAs wwpns.