suadsnarrowviewontheworldparticularlyfibrechannel..

Get SCSI and mutate it with Fibre Networks....

The WWN is the unique name given to a HBA (Host Bus Adapter = Fibre Card)
connecting to the Fabric. Almost exactly like the MAC address on an ethernet 
card.

The fabric is like a non-blocking switched network ... a high quality network.
(Bit of a misleading statement as this implying all ports on the connecting
devices have the ability to run @100% throughput simultaneously)

A LUN is a device off the HBA, e.g. If you have a fibre attached tape
library with 2 tapes, they will be seen as 2 LUNs. The library controller will
be a 3rd LUN.

A host machine will generally see LUNs from other hosts (like the tape
library). This also depend if the SAN management lets them see the remote LUNs.
I have not seen a program to see other hosts (like arp)

I do not know how a server can export its disks/tapes onto the fabric.

So my AIX box sees 3 disks (from a storage array on the fabric), 5 tape devices
and a tape controller (from the tape library).
It sees them almost exactly the same way it sees a local SCSI device except
fibre channel sounds cool.
If you think about how an ethernet card has a hardware driver then drivers
for the corresponding layers, there is the host adapter driver then the
fibre-scsi driver, the driver that sets up logicaldevicesoverphysicaldevices-
beacusetherearemultiplepaths etc.. (the host adapter device may have all this
built in)

The storage array has a front-end program that allows the 3 disks to be
exported to a given WWN (I maually type it in)

The library is just plugged in (no smarts).

The fabric, a lonely switch (until we come up with the bikkies for a mate), is
programmed to allow the ports on the library, the storage array and the AIX
host to see each other (zoned).

the end

Cheers, Suad
--
 Suad Musovich (s.musovich AT auckland.ac DOT nz)
 Suad Musovich (s.musovich AT auckland.ac DOT nz)
 Unix Support, ITSS Operations
 University of Auckland



On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 04:24:50PM +1300, Walker, Lesley R wrote:
> Hi Ron, thanks again for the answer.
>
> Sorry to be asking so many questions, I just don't know much about
> fibre-channel and even less about switched fibre-channel.
>
> So, is a world wide name a sort of alias that creates a tunnel through the
> switch in this case?  Could I just pick, say SCSI-ID 2 and put in a line
> that says
> hba1-SCSI-target-id-2-fibre-channel-name="something"
> and then as long as "something" points to the right thing it will work?  Or
> does it have to be the right SCSI-ID?
>
> One thing that's holding me back is not having any doco for the Qlogic card
> (it was "borrowed" from another project) so thanks for pointing me at the
> qla2200.conf file.
>
> Another general Solaris question, is it safe to do "boot -r" before running
> the add_drv commands?  I was told very early on to never do boot -r at all,
> but I suspect this advice may have been a bit bogus.
>
> We have JNI cards in the box as well (for connecting to EMC) so it gets
> rather confusing!  (The box is an E4500 if that matters)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ron Pavan [mailto:ronpavan AT MGMMIRAGE DOT NET]
> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 12:36 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: TSM, SAN, ACSLS and Solaris
>
>
> I believe what you  are looking for is placed in a conf file.  example:  We
> have a sun e3500 running with QLogic HBA's.  We define a target-id to a
> world wide name on a fiber switch (can can also define a target to a port
> number on the switch but then you are limited to that port and if the port
> goes bad you cannot switch ports without a reboot).  This config files is
> \kernel\drv\qla2200.conf.  When you reboot/reconfigure the st.conf should
> scan for targets that can now be found because the HBA is defining them.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Walker, Lesley R [mailto:lesley.walker AT EDS DOT COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 2:34 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: TSM, SAN, ACSLS and Solaris
>
>
> Thanks for the answer, and thanks to the others who answered too.
>
> The part that I'm trying to figure out now is how to install the drivers.
> With Solaris, you have to edit a file that contains definitions of the
> SCSI-IDs of the tape drive.  How can that work if the tape drives are
> assigned via a switch?  Do you set up some kind of permanent virtual circuit
> so that you always get the same drives?
>
> Please excuse my ignorance - I have no access to the SAN switch doco, as it
> is being set up by people in another team in a different city.
>
> The latest information I have on the switch is that it is either Inrange
> FC9000-16 or Brocade Silkwork 2800.