FC4400 Connection Options

[EMC4Me]

I've managed to get my FC4400 up and running and managed to create myself a RAID-5 array. Onto the next step - connectivity.

I've configured the (Ethernet) network and got it to the point where I can telnet into it. I don't have Navishpere, but from what I understand, I don't necessarily need it. My main question at this point is how (physically) do I need to connect things?

The FC4400 has 2 Ethernet ports, and if I've understood things correctly, those are for maintenance/config only - I can't access data through those ports. Is that statement correct?

Assuming it is, the next set of connectors I have available are the 4-wire high-speed serial ports. I also have a set of short serial cables that came with it, along with a Brocade Silkworm 2800 switch. I can plug the cables from the drive into the switch, which then give me multiple high-speed serial and GBIC (I think?) connections. The Silkworm also has an Ethernet port, which again I believe is not for access to data.

Given all of that, my assumption is that I'll need to get myself an HBA card. Will any HBA that supports my OS (Windows Vista) work, or do I need a specific card? I see a (very) wide price range of cards on e-bay... is spending the extra $$ worthwhile, or are their perfectly good inexpensive cards on the market?

 

[EMC4Me]

Update - I found an outdated 10/100 switch with a GBIC port on it. I took the card out of the Silkworm and put it into the Switch, and everything there seems happy enough... But I'm afraid I don't know what the next step is. Without Navisphere software, how do I make the jump from having a fully configured array ready to go in FCLI over to having the array visible in Windows?

I read at one point that Microsoft's iSCSI initiator may be an option, but I'm not able to connect to it that way (at least not using the IP I assigned for the Telnet console). The system does appear to be listening on that IP through port 2918, but that seems to be of little help to me at this point.

Any help is appreciated... Even if you're just pointing me to other documentation out there. I've had a tough time finding much of anything on the FC4400, and what I've found on the FC4700 doesn't always seem to apply.

 

[EMC4Me]

I now have Navishpere CLI, though after installing it, I haven't come up with a good way to connect the Navishpere Agent to the FC4400. I'm getting the impression that Navishpere works specifically with a SAN attached to an on-board HBA. Since I connected my SAN to a GBIC port on an Ethernet switch, I'm not able to find a method to connect Navishpere to it. Am I missing a command somewhere, or do I need to get myself that HBA (and if so, which one)?

 

[EMC4Me]

After doing more research, I think I can answer my own questions. Here's what I've learned:

The SAN operates it's data connectivity through the Fibre Channel connections. It does so using the Fibre Channel/SCSI protocol. HBA cards pretty much all support the SCSI protocol, and some also support IP (standard Ethernet-style) and VI (used for clustering) protocols. Since I have no intention of using my Fibre network for anything beyond SAN, just about any HBA card I can find should work for my purposes.

There are different speeds of HBA's - primarily 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps. The 2 Gbps cards support 1 Gbps (backwards compatible), but not the other way around. I have yet to determine if the FC4400 supports 2Gbps speeds or not.

HBA's also have different cache sizes, and obviously the larger the cache, the more potential there is for speed - assuming I reread the same data more than once.

So (please - correct me if I'm wrong about any of this!) I think I need at minimum, a 1Gbps HBA card with no on-board cache, and available drivers for my OS - Windows Vista. For true power, I would want a 2Gbps card with the highest cache size I could find.

Does that all sound right?

 

[maultier]

Our Clariions are mostly supported by Emulex cards. LP8000 is what came configured in our older machines back when these were new. Some newer ones had the lp9802 and lp9002 running with fibre gbics in the sp's instead of the copper you appear to have. It's likely that any emulex fibre controller will work. Qlogic is another vendor that we have in use for Clariion. Read Write Caching on the Storage Processor is where Clariion gets most of it's speed boost. In order to have caching enabled, you need to have at least two sp's and one functional battery backup installed in the Clariion.
Navi - Once agent is installed, you should be able to connect to the array and use the cli commands through the serial port. Once the hba is installed, you'll be able to do that thru the controller to sp path. You just need to make sure that the agent.config file is set up properly to allow the communication.