As part of some current SharePoint 2010 on FlexPod work, I have been setting up some VMware ESX servers to boot from SAN. After a few quick searchs I found a few very good posts online.
BootFromSAN101 with Cisco UCS
UCS Boot Whitepaper
I thought the BootFromSAN 101 post had a good outline. So I decided to take it a few steps futher and create a video on NetApp storage provisioning, Cisco Nexus 5000 zoning and Cisco UCS boot from SAN for VMware vSphere ESXi 4.1.
Some basic facts about the software and hardware used and a quick outline for the video.
Cisco Hardware/Software
UCS Manager: Version 1.4(1j)
Blade CIMC Controller:Version 1.4(1j)
Blade BIOS: S5500.86B.01.00.0036-191.061320091126
Blade Interface Card: Version 1.4(1j)
CS 5108 Blade Server Chassis
UCS 2104XP Fabric Extender/4 external 10Gb ports
UCS B200 M1 Blade Server; dual Intel Xeon X5570 CPUs (2.933 GHz & 4 Cores), 48GB RAM (DDR3 1067 MHz)
UCS 6120XP 20-port Fabric Interconnect
Nexus5020 Chassis (40x10GE) version 5.0(2)N2(1)
NetApp Hardware/Software
FAS3270
RAID group size 16 containing 11 SAS 10K 600GB
8.0.1 7-Mode
Configured active/active system
NetApp System Manager 1.1
Videos
NetApp System Manager/Provisioning
A collegue of mine, Mr. Allan Wilson, was kind enough to lend me a diagram of the physical topology.
Best practice post for single initator/target zoning
http://www.unifiedcomputingblog.com/?p=158
If you run into any issues there is a very good troubleshooting checklist already created for you.
Hi David,
I’m trying to get a handle on NetApp and how it should be physically configured. I think I understand the diagram but it would be nice if the devices were labeled. Thanks.
Robert,
Thanks for the feedback. I couldn’t agree more. Please see the updated diagram.