vHBA Zoning

[iwearing]

Hi,

My Service Profiles are configured as Boot from SAN. The vHBAs Login to the Brocade Fibre Channel Fabric and are can be zoned as required.

My ESXI Hosts will require access to other Luns on the Storage. A further 2 vHBAs have been added to the Service Profile for this reason. However they never Login to the Brocade Fabric and therefore cannot be zoned.

Any ideas why they do Login to the Fabric would be appreciated.

Ian.                  

[Walter Dey]

are the 2 vhba's that don't flogi, use the same uplink to the Brocade ?

are the vhba in the same vsan, as the port connecting to the Brocade ?

[iwearing]

Hi,

Yes they additional vHBA's use the same uplinks to the Brocade. 2 Uplinks are configured on each FI to each Brocade.

They are in the default vsan (same vsan as the Boot from SAM vhba's.

Without a boot target configured on the vhba's should they send a flogi to the Brocade?

thanks

Ian.

[Walter Dey]

I would highly recommend, not using default VSAN = 1; use e.g. VSAN 10 for fabric A, and VSAN 11 for fabric B; and map the FCoE Vlan to some higher id, eg. 3010 resp. 3011.

Then move your physical FC ports to this vsans, as well as the vhba's

ssh to both FI; connect nxos; and do a "sho flogi ....." and post the output

I you have 2 links between each FI and Brocade; take one down, and verify if boot is still working and the rest as well

did you do a fc zoning for the additional vhba's, AND also the masking / mapping on the storage ?

I assume you have NPV mode on the FI, and Access Gateway (NPIV) on the Brocade ?

[iwearing]

Hi,

This turned out to be an OS issue and not FI related configuration.

I am using the default VSAN 1 as I am connecting directly to Brocade switches and not Cisco MDS.

Thanks for the suggestions

[Walter Dey]

My arguments regarding VSAN id's (different from 1) are totally indepedent of Brocade or MDS ?

Please don't use VSAN 1 !

If you connect any VSAN to Brocade, the VSAN tag will be removed !

[Tom MacDonald]

You should see the WWNs at the FIs first, run the following command.

# conn nxos

# sho npv flogi-table

IMHO, the additional vHBAs and not necessary unless some sort of security requirements or these vHBAs will beassociated to a different vSAN than your boot LUNs. If all the storage is coming from the same array, drop the other vHBA.