Maximum Number Of Host Connections; Direct-Attach Topologies; Direct Host Connections To One Controller Shelf Or Controller-Drive Tray - Quantum StorNext QD7000 Hardware Manual

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• When the host operating system is Windows, mixing connection types within a storage partition
is not supported. A single server that attaches to multiple storage partitions on a single storage
array must not have any overlap in LUN number assignments given to the volumes.
• For other operating systems, mixed connection types from a host to a single storage array are not
supported.
A host port is connected to a host adapter: a host bus adapter (HBA) for Fibre Channel or SAS, a host
channel adapter (HCA) for InfiniBand, or an Ethernet adapter for iSCSI. The host adapter in the host
must support the same interface protocols as the type of host port to which it is connected.
Connect an 16-Gb/s Fibre Channel host port to an 16-Gb/s HBA. If the data rate for the HBA is
lower, the data transfer rate is at the lower rate. For instance, if you connect an 16-Gb/s Fibre
Channel host port to a 8-Gb/s HBA, the data transfer rate is 8 Gb/s.

Maximum number of host connections

Model
E5700 controller shelves and EF570 flash
arrays
E5600 controller-drive trays and EF560 flash
arrays
E2800 controller shelves
E2700 controller-drive trays
Attention: Possible loss of data access – Do not use a combination of HBAs from different
vendors in the same storage area network (SAN). For the HBAs to perform correctly, use only
HBAs from one manufacturer in a SAN.

Direct-attach topologies

This section describes topologies that do not use switches to connect hosts to your storage array. The
host adapters in the hosts might be HBAs for Fibre Channel or SAS, HCAs for InfiniBand, or
Ethernet for iSCSI. Some controller shelves (controller-drive trays) support more direct host
connections than the examples shown. To cable more host connections, follow the pattern established
by the examples in this section.
When a host is cabled to a duplex controller shelf, each attached host should have two host adapters
installed. For redundancy, connect one host adapter to controller A and the other to controller B.

Direct host connections to one controller shelf or controller-drive tray

These example configurations show HBAs as connecting points on the host. For other configurations,
these connecting points might be host channel adapters (HCAs) for InfiniBand connections, Ethernet
adapters for iSCSI connections, or a combination of one HBA and one iSCSI Ethernet adapter.
Possible loss of data access – You must install alternate path software or an alternate
Attention:
path (failover) driver on the host to support failover in the event of an HBA, an HCA, or an iSCSI
Ethernet adapter failure or a host channel failure. Simplex configurations do not support failover.
The following figure shows an example of a direct-attach topology with one host and a duplex
controller shelf (controller-drive tray).
Maximum number of hosts
1024
1024
256
256