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#1
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Zones and RSCN
Hello,
I'm new to SANs so please excuse my ignorance. I've been reading about zoning and RSCNs. From what I've read RSCNs are sent to all members of a zone after a change in the port status occurs on a port in that zone. For example, if all servers are in the same zone, and one of them is rebooted, an RSCN is sent to all the other hosts in that same zone to notify them of the event. At this time are the other hosts in the zone "knocked offline" termporarily while they do name server refresh? How can you prevent this? I've read a post that somebody said to create one zone per port, this way it won't affect any other hosts. What can you do if you have a backup type environment where all hosts need to speak to one host (the backup server)? -TIA |
#2
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I'm new to SANs so please excuse my ignorance. I've been reading
about zoning and RSCNs. From what I've read RSCNs are sent to all members of a zone after a change in the port status occurs on a port in that zone. For example, if all servers are in the same zone, and one of them is rebooted, an RSCN is sent to all the other hosts in that same zone to notify them of the event. At this time are the other hosts in the zone "knocked offline" termporarily while they do name server refresh? How can you prevent this? I've read a post that somebody said to create one zone per port, this way it won't affect any other hosts. Yes, thats true. You should define a zone allways with only one FC-HBA member. What can you do if you have a backup type environment where all hosts need to speak to one host (the backup server)? Sorry, I don't understand this question. Why should the client hosts speak to the backup server over FC? Most of this solutions I know talk via IP for Information/Metadata Interchange. What specific solution is that you speak about? René -TIA |
#3
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I beleive the OP is referring to backing up to a media server over the
fiber channel to (possibly) fiber channel drives. In this case you would create a seperate zone that includes all backup clients and the server. When it's time to do backups move all hosts into this zone. This requires some scripting on the switch side but I know of at least one person who does this exact config. Obviously the backup zone needs to include any members that the client communicated with in the non-backup zone. ~F On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:47:08 +0200, "Rene Köhnen-Wiesemes" wrote: I'm new to SANs so please excuse my ignorance. I've been reading about zoning and RSCNs. From what I've read RSCNs are sent to all members of a zone after a change in the port status occurs on a port in that zone. For example, if all servers are in the same zone, and one of them is rebooted, an RSCN is sent to all the other hosts in that same zone to notify them of the event. At this time are the other hosts in the zone "knocked offline" termporarily while they do name server refresh? How can you prevent this? I've read a post that somebody said to create one zone per port, this way it won't affect any other hosts. Yes, thats true. You should define a zone allways with only one FC-HBA member. What can you do if you have a backup type environment where all hosts need to speak to one host (the backup server)? Sorry, I don't understand this question. Why should the client hosts speak to the backup server over FC? Most of this solutions I know talk via IP for Information/Metadata Interchange. What specific solution is that you speak about? René -TIA |
#4
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Sounds interesting. But personally I've never seen such kind
of configuration. What I have implemented up to now looks different: Veritas Netbackup uses a central Backup Server and the Media Server option for these servers which holds huge amount of data. These Media Servers have direct connection to the tapes in a tape library like the Backup Server. The trick is that tapes are shared between Backup Server and Media Server. All other servers can be backup via LAN. Nevertheless, you can configure zones that contains only one hba per zone. Legato Networker works the same, only nomenclatura is different, the Media Servers are called Storage Nodes, and the licence you should have is DDS (Dynamic Device Sharing). As obove, each fc hba should have his private zone. René SAN configuration rule of "Faeandar" schrieb im Newsbeitrag ... I beleive the OP is referring to backing up to a media server over the fiber channel to (possibly) fiber channel drives. In this case you would create a seperate zone that includes all backup clients and the server. When it's time to do backups move all hosts into this zone. This requires some scripting on the switch side but I know of at least one person who does this exact config. Obviously the backup zone needs to include any members that the client communicated with in the non-backup zone. ~F On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:47:08 +0200, "Rene Köhnen-Wiesemes" wrote: I'm new to SANs so please excuse my ignorance. I've been reading about zoning and RSCNs. From what I've read RSCNs are sent to all members of a zone after a change in the port status occurs on a port in that zone. For example, if all servers are in the same zone, and one of them is rebooted, an RSCN is sent to all the other hosts in that same zone to notify them of the event. At this time are the other hosts in the zone "knocked offline" termporarily while they do name server refresh? How can you prevent this? I've read a post that somebody said to create one zone per port, this way it won't affect any other hosts. Yes, thats true. You should define a zone allways with only one FC-HBA member. What can you do if you have a backup type environment where all hosts need to speak to one host (the backup server)? Sorry, I don't understand this question. Why should the client hosts speak to the backup server over FC? Most of this solutions I know talk via IP for Information/Metadata Interchange. What specific solution is that you speak about? René -TIA |
#5
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Some people want to get backup traffic off the LAN if possible so they
use either SAN media servers or SSO over fiber (Veritas specific lingo here). With this you can move all your backup traffic over the fiber and keep the LAN available for user access. You can only have one hba in one zone *at a time*. There is nothing to prevent one hba being in multiple inactive zones concurrently. Like I said, it takes some scripting at the switch but you can easily move the hba into a "backup" zone. ~F On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 21:57:39 +0200, "Rene Köhnen-Wiesemes" wrote: Sounds interesting. But personally I've never seen such kind of configuration. What I have implemented up to now looks different: Veritas Netbackup uses a central Backup Server and the Media Server option for these servers which holds huge amount of data. These Media Servers have direct connection to the tapes in a tape library like the Backup Server. The trick is that tapes are shared between Backup Server and Media Server. All other servers can be backup via LAN. Nevertheless, you can configure zones that contains only one hba per zone. Legato Networker works the same, only nomenclatura is different, the Media Servers are called Storage Nodes, and the licence you should have is DDS (Dynamic Device Sharing). As obove, each fc hba should have his private zone. René SAN configuration rule of "Faeandar" schrieb im Newsbeitrag .. . I beleive the OP is referring to backing up to a media server over the fiber channel to (possibly) fiber channel drives. In this case you would create a seperate zone that includes all backup clients and the server. When it's time to do backups move all hosts into this zone. This requires some scripting on the switch side but I know of at least one person who does this exact config. Obviously the backup zone needs to include any members that the client communicated with in the non-backup zone. ~F On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:47:08 +0200, "Rene Köhnen-Wiesemes" wrote: I'm new to SANs so please excuse my ignorance. I've been reading about zoning and RSCNs. From what I've read RSCNs are sent to all members of a zone after a change in the port status occurs on a port in that zone. For example, if all servers are in the same zone, and one of them is rebooted, an RSCN is sent to all the other hosts in that same zone to notify them of the event. At this time are the other hosts in the zone "knocked offline" termporarily while they do name server refresh? How can you prevent this? I've read a post that somebody said to create one zone per port, this way it won't affect any other hosts. Yes, thats true. You should define a zone allways with only one FC-HBA member. What can you do if you have a backup type environment where all hosts need to speak to one host (the backup server)? Sorry, I don't understand this question. Why should the client hosts speak to the backup server over FC? Most of this solutions I know talk via IP for Information/Metadata Interchange. What specific solution is that you speak about? René -TIA |
#6
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Faeandar wrote in message . ..
Some people want to get backup traffic off the LAN if possible so they use either SAN media servers or SSO over fiber (Veritas specific lingo here). With this you can move all your backup traffic over the fiber and keep the LAN available for user access. You can only have one hba in one zone *at a time*. There is nothing to prevent one hba being in multiple inactive zones concurrently. Like I said, it takes some scripting at the switch but you can easily move the hba into a "backup" zone. ~F Faeandar, I've seen many configurations where a single HBA is in multiple active zones. For instance, you can have a single HBA zoned to two storage targets, and create two zones for this purpose: Zone 1: HBA_A - Storage_A Zone 2: HBA_A - Storage_B And beyond this, you could also have HBA_A zoned to, say, a SCSI-Fibre Bridge for a tape library, if this host was a media server or was using the Netbackup SSO or something to that extent: Zone 3: HBA_A - Bridge_A You could have all three of these zones active at the same time. You would just have to ensure that you defined the persistent binding appropriately on the host side. In other words, you might have Storage_A on target 16, Storage_B on target 17, and Bridge_A on target 18. I don't see any reason why anyone would want to write scripts to change their zoning configurations on a daily basis -- that sounds kind of risky to me. Especially considering the fact that if you were _MOVE_ the HBA out of its "production" zone and into a "backup" zone on a nightly basis, you would lose access to your production volumes.. - Sean |
#8
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Just so everyone knows there are typically two behaviors of RSCNs and
zoning changes out there. I remember working on a McData switch that had it zoning behavior configureable. In one state it would send an RSCN to ALL zones when ANY zoning changes are made. Then there was another state when it would only send an RSCN to zones that actually changed. So if a change was made to zone A, ONLY zone A gets an RSCN. I think that both methods are right according to the spec. But I think the second one is cleaner... Lyle |
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