Fibre Channel Connections; Fibre Channel Host Loop Configurations; Direct (Out-Of-Band) Managed Storage Subsystems - IBM DS4800 User, Installation And Maintenance Manual

Figure 62. Direct (out-of-band) managed storage subsystems

Fibre channel connections

The storage subsystem fibre channel connection consists of up to four host
fibre-channel loops and a redundant drive fibre-channel loop. The host fibre-channel
loops provide the fibre path for host attachment. They can consist of fibre-channel
cables, SFPs, host bus adapters, fibre-channel switches, and RAID controllers. The
redundant drive fibre-channel loop provides the fibre path from the DS4800 Storage
Subsystem to the hard disk drives (HDDs) in the storage expansion enclosures.
The redundant drive fibre-channel loop consists of the DS4800 Storage Subsystem,
the storage expansion enclosures, fibre-channel cables, and SFPs.
The DS4800 supports redundant drive channel pair configurations. You can build a
redundant drive channel pair by connecting one or more storage expansion
enclosures to the redundant RAID controllers. Then, use dual fiber-optic cables to
connect one storage expansion enclosure to another in a daisy-chain. For more
information, see "Connecting storage expansion enclosures to the DS4800" on page
59.

Fibre channel host loop configurations

You must determine how the host systems will connect to the storage subsystem.
You can connect up to four host systems directly to the storage subsystem, or you
can connect more than two hosts to the fibre channel storage subsystem through
switches. The illustrations in the following sections show common host system
configurations.
84
IBM System Storage DS4800 Storage Subsystem: Installation, User's, and Maintenance Guide
Controller
Controller
Controller
Controller
Storage subsystems
Ethernet
Host computer
Fibre Channel
I/O path
Note: The client software is
installed on one or more
management systems,
or on the host computer.
Management station