SAN connection

[Sakthivel]

Cooper,

Thanks a lot for such an detailed information, it was very helpful for me to understand.

Regards,
Sakthi
  


--- On Wed, 6/4/08, dbcooper <dclinuxlist at gmail.com> wrote:
From: dbcooper <dclinuxlist at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: SAN connection
To: "General Red Hat Linux discussion list" <redhat-list at redhat.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2008, 7:32 AM

Not that long ago I was faced with some of the same questions myself. There
is a lot to learn in this area. Hopefully this will help you along.

There are so many variables to SAN setup/configurations it will be hard to
just give you simple direct answers.
However, I'll give some replies to each (maybe it will get you going in the
right direction).

1.Blades (or any servers) can connect varies ways to the SAN, but Fiber
(fabric) or iSCSI (ip/switches) is the most common, this will also depend on
your backplane on your Blade Center etc.

2. You normally create "Raid Groups / LUNS" on a SAN and then create
Partitions / Volumes from the LUNS presented to your servers. Then use fdisk
/ mkfs  and so on.

3. Step by step...will be hard as this can vary differently depending on
your setup etc. and most people barley have time to document that for even
their own setups. (See 4.)

4. Basic concept of SAN storage should really be in slot number #1. If
you're very new to SAN technology there are some decent docs out there.
Just
search around.
You'll also want to learn more about Fabric / Zoning and so on if using
Fiber.

Examples:
http://www.brocade.com/san/evaluate/explore_solutions.jsp
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245470.html?Open

IBM Redbook search results on SANS -
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/cgi-bin/searchsite.cgi?query=SAN

Another important area you'll need to learn about is having Multiple Paths
to your SAN. This allows for fail over and redundancy setups, on the server
side your results will vary when using tools to manage the LUNS presented,
you may see 2 disks when theres only 1 and so on.  So you will need to
figure out if your using native multipathing or something like Powerpath,
which will also help with the persistent binding issue.

Red Hat 5.1 - dm-multipathing info =
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/en-US/RHEL510/DM_Multipath/index.html(this
also has some good examples of SAN practices)

You'll also need to figure out / decide if your going to use LVM to mange
your drives or just straight up ext3 mounts etc. (I would use generic ext3
at first until you mess with LVM)

Red Hat 5.1 - LVM guide =
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/en-US/RHEL510/Cluster_Logical_Volume_Manager/index.html
*NOTE:* If you do use LVM to manage your LUNS make sure you read up on
backing up and import/export of the LVM data. Lets say your server caught on
fire, I don't think you could re-mount your LUNS to another box and read
the
data without importing the LVM info. I could be wrong on this area as I've
not tested it, but from my limited knowledge thus far.....you wouldn't be
happy.

If you're using Fiber HBA's, find out what model they are. There is a
ton of
ways to do this, but you can simply do a "sudo /sbin/lsmod" or how
ever else
you want. Then look up the vendor and dig up any docs you can on their
product (it should be either Emulex or Qlogic). Depending on your
cards/drivers etc you will need to be careful when updating to new kernels,
yes the drivers for Emulex and Qlogic are native but if your accessing the
SAN during boot (or booting from SAN) you might need to redo your initrd.
Read more in your products driver installation instructions.

This is by no means the only info you'll need, but as I said it should get
you started. Get some Advil handy!

HTH.





On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Sakthivel <sarkdts at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
>    I have HP SAN box and IBM Blade center with SAN module. In Blade center
> running OS is Oracle enterprise Linux 5 Update 1 ( 5.1)
>    I want to know( I am new to SAN Storage)
>
>    1. How to connect the IBM Blade to SAN ?
>    2. How to create Partition in SAN box ?
>    3. Please provide all the things with step by step
>     4. Basic concept of SAN storage
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Regards,
> Sakthi
>
>
>
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