MAGiC Conference

September, 2017

SAN Overview for IBM i Chris Bremer, CTO

About Us Who We Are

About Us

Overview

» Founded in 1973

» Over 2,000 customers worldwide

» Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado

» Over 44 years of experience with high availability, high performance architectures

» Specializes in commercial, public sector and financial data storage

2,000+ customers

worldwide

About Us

Sample of Current Customers

Presenting

Chris Bremer

» Chief Technology Officer

» 20+ years in data storage

SAN

Concepts

» Fibre Channel

» Hardware

» Topologies

» Ports

Fibre Channel IBM i SAN Overview

SAN

What is it?

» SAN = STORAGE AREA NETWORK

» A high speed network connecting storage devices

» Disk

» Tape

» Virtual Tape

SAN

What isn’t it?

» SAN is not NAS misspelled

» NAS = Network Attached Storage

» File level storage (i.e. file server)

» SAN = Storage Area Network

» Block level storage

SAN - Fiber vs. Fibre

What is Fibre?

» Something we should get more of?

» Something we make clothes out of?

» A Type of cable?

NO! IT IS A PROTOCOL STANDARD

SAN – Where did it come from?

History

» SCSI

» Limited cable lengths

» Limited speeds

» Fibre Channel

» Evolved to a protocol stack

» Uses same upper layer as SCSI

» Lower layers define protocol and hardware

» Not same layers as OSI

» Optimized for storage

SAN – How fast?

History

» 1988 – specification work started

» 1994 – ANSI standard approved

» 1997 – 1Gb products available

» 2001 – 2Gb products available

» 2004 – 4Gb products available

» 2005 – 8Gb products available

» 2008 – 10Gb products available

» 2011 – 16Gb products available

» 2016 – 32Gb and 128Gb products available

Hardware IBM i SAN Overview

SAN

Hardware

» Host HBA

» Vary by host

» Cabling

» Connectors

» Switches (optional)

SAN

Cabling

» Glass

» Multi-mode • 50 micron

– Newer installations

• 62.5 micron

» Single mode • Very long

distances

» Copper

SAN

Connectors

» SC cable for GBICs

• Old 1 Gb/s

» LC cable for SFPs

• Newer 2 Gb/s+

» MPO (Multi-fiber Push On) (QSFP)

• Speeds above 32 Gb/s

» HSSDC for copper cables

• Old, slow, short, expensive

SAN

GBIC

» GBIC = Gigabit Interface Converter

» Used with SC cable/connectors

» 1 Gb/s Fibre Channel

» Copper and optical fiber versions

» > 1 Gb/s systems use SFP

» Also known as transceivers (GCIC and SFP)

SAN

SFP

» SFP = Small Form-factor Pluggable

» Not just for Fibre Channel

» Not just for Fiber Optic cabling

» Different types

» SFP, SFP+, QSFP, QSFP+, QSFP28, CFP, XFP

SAN

Switches

» Switches implement fabric environments

» Allows for hardware isolation

» Allows multiple configurations

Topologies and ports IBM i SAN Overview

SAN

Topologies

» Point-to-Point (FC-P2P)

» No address

» Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL)

» 8 bit address (ALPA)

• soft or hard

» Switched Fabric (FC-SW)

» 24 bit address

Host Device

Host Device Device

Host Device

Device

Device

Switch Host

Host

SAN

Ports

What is all this port stuff?

SAN

Ports

» WWN – World Wide Name

» Assigned by device manufacturer

» Think like MAC addresses

» WWPN – World Wide Port Name

» Port id, initiator

» WWNN – World Wide Node Name

» Device id, target

» NPIV » N_Port ID Virtualization

SAN

Switch zoning

» Zoning

» Zoning used with switched (fabric) SANs

» Isolates ports and devices from other ports/devices

» Hard and Soft zoning • Soft zoning restricts visibility by name service

• Hard zoning restricts actual communication

• New switches handle soft like hard zoning

» Port and WWN zoning • Port zoning applies to the switch port

• WWN zoning applies to the a devices WWN

SAN

Switch zoning

Host

Device

Device

Device

Host

Host

Device

Device

» Isolates hosts and peripheral devices from each other

» Multiple configuration files

Device

Device

SAN

Other

» FCoE – Fibre Channel over Ethernet » Larger IP bandwidth

required

» 8Gbps FC -> 10Gbps IP

» CNA- converged network adapter

» iSCSI

» SAS

SAN and IBM i

SAN in IBM i

» Disk

» IASP – Independent Auxiliary Storage Pool

» Virtual Tape Libraries

» DSI among others

» Tape

» LTO – 7 Ultrium

» TS1150

SAN and IBMi

Learn more

» Redbooks

» Old (2005) but concepts still valid (Parts 1 &2)

» Introduction to Storage Area Networks (2016, updated 2016)

• Not IBM i specific

» INCITS Standards Groups

» T10 – SCSI Storage Interfaces

» T11 – Fibre Channel Interfaces

Fiber: It’s what we should all have more of

Questions?

Visit the DSI booth