How to add SAN on RH 9

[Ed Wilts]

On Sat, Jul 31, 2004 at 09:54:09AM -0700, Ashok wrote:
> How to configure SAN (connected with HBA via Fiber cable) on Red Hat Linux
> 9.0..?

For starters, upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  If your system is
important enough to be connected to a SAN, it's important enough to be
supported properly.

How you SAN-connect depends largely on what kind of storage systems are
at the other end.  You can do single-pathing fairly easily, but when you
go for multipathing, you're going to have some serious if you're not
careful.  An EMC Symmetrix is active/active on the 2 paths and you
should be able to use the mddriver in multipath mode (see the archives
of the taroon list).  An HP EVA, on the other hand, is active/passive
and the mddriver does not support this.  We currently use QLogics HBAs
with the latest driver to access an EVA - the driver handles the
multipathing (although I haven't put this into production yet and won't
until I verify how well the multipathing works).  

Remember that RHL 9 is no longer supported - you won't get current
drivers, you're unlikely to get vendor support, and you *will* set
yourself up for support issues down the road.  SANs are still bleeding
edge in many ways and you need to be both stable and current.

Lots of fun...

        .../Ed
-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program