Grounding Checks; Host System Requirements; Cabling Considerations; Connecting The Enclosure To Hosts - Lenovo ThinkSystem DS Series Hardware Installation And Maintenance Manual

Grounding checks

The product must only be connected to a power source that has a safety electrical earth connection.
CAUTION: If more than one enclosure goes in a rack, the importance of the earth connection to the rack
increases because the rack will have a larger Earth Leakage Current (Touch Current).
Examine the earth connection to the rack before power on. An electrical engineer who is qualified to the
appropriate local and national standards must do the examination.

Host system requirements

Hosts connected to a DS Series controller enclosure must meet the following requirements:
Depending on your system configuration, host operating systems may require that multipathing is supported.
If fault tolerance is required, then multipathing software may be required. Host-based multipath software should be
used in any configuration where two logical paths between the host and any storage volume may exist at the same
time. This would include most configurations where there are multiple connections to the host or multiple
connections between a switch and the storage.
Use native Microsoft MPIO DSM support with Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server
2016. Use either the Server Manager or the mpclaim CLI tool to perform the installation.
See the following web sites for information about using native Microsoft MPIO DSM:
https://support.microsoft.com
https://technet.microsoft.com

Cabling considerations

Common cabling configurations address hosts, controller enclosures, expansion enclosures, and switches. Host
interface ports on DS Series controller enclosures can connect to respective hosts via direct-attach or switch-attach.
Cabling systems to enable use of the optional replication feature—to replicate volumes—is yet another important
cabling consideration. See
models can be licensed to support replication, whereas the HD mini-SAS models cannot.
Use only Lenovo ThinkSystem or OEM-qualified cables for host connection:
• Qualified Fibre Channel SFP and cable options
• Qualified 10GbE iSCSI SFP and cable options
• Qualified 1Gb RJ-45 SFP and cable options
•
Qualified HD mini-SAS cable options

Connecting the enclosure to hosts

A host identifies an external port to which the storage system is attached. The external port may be a port in an I/O
adapter (such as an FC HBA) in a server. Cable connections vary depending on configuration. This section
describes host interface protocols supported by DS Series controller enclosures, while showing a few common
cabling configurations.
NOTE: DS Series controllers use Unified LUN Presentation (ULP), which enables a host to access mapped
volumes through any controller host port.
72 Installation
(search the site for "multipath I/O overview")
"Connecting a management host on the network" (page 79). The FC and iSCSI product