Minimum And Recommended Cable Configurations - Dell EqualLogic PS4210 Installation And Setup Manual

PS4210 Installation Guide
Recommendation Description
Management Connect the management ports on both control modules to a 10/100Mbps
network (optional) network switch to keep management traffic separate from iSCSI traffic.
Access to the group In a multi-subnet group, each configured network interface should have access
IP address (Hosts) to the subnet on which the group IP address resides.
For replication, a For effective and predictable replication, t he network link between the primary
reliable, adequately and secondary groups must be reliable and provide sufficient bandwidth for
sized network link copying data.
If possible, do not use Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) on switch ports that
connect end nodes (iSCSI initiators or array network interfaces).
If you must use STP or RSTP (STP is preferable), e nable the port settings
(available on some switches) that let the port immediately transition into STP
Use of spanning-tree
forwarding state upon link up. This functionality can reduce network
protocol
interruptions that occur when devices restart, and s hould b e enabled only on
switch ports that connect end nodes.
You can use STP for a single-cable connection between switches and t runking
for multicable connections between switches.
To use DCB (Data Center Bridging), configure switches to use VLANs to
VLANs
separate iSCSI SAN traffic from other network traffic.
You must have VLANs enabled. Refer to the Dell EqualLogic Group Manager
Administrator's Manual, and the Dell EqualLogic Group Manager
DCB
CLI Reference Guide for more information about DCB.
Minimum and Recommended Cable
Configurations
For a dual control module array, the recommended configuration is to connect network cables to
Ethernet 0 on both control modules, and connect each control module to a network switch.
For high performance and availability, distribute the connections across multiple network
switches.
The switches must be connected with interswitch links that have sufficient bandwidth to handle
the iSCSI traffic, or by stacking capability. Dell recommends using stacking configurations
wherever possible.
Figure 6 illustrates the recommended network configuration alternatives.
Note: Dell does not recommend connecting both the SFP+ and 10GBASE-T Ethernet ports at
the same time.
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3 Connecting the Array Cables