Veritas-bu

Re: [Veritas-bu] single initiator zoning

2009-02-27 14:55:41
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] single initiator zoning
From: Ed Wilts <ewilts AT ewilts DOT org>
To: "Geyer, Gregory" <Gregory.Geyer AT avnet DOT com>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:40:24 -0600
I'm well aware of the best practices for single initiator zoning (and have a pair of Brocade certifications).  However, this is a best practice and has absolutely nothing to do with performance.  My personal approach has been to create one zone for each host's disk HBA with the appropriate disk storage, and then create 1 larger zone with all of the tape drives/Decru appliances and the media servers' tape HBAs.  So for 3 media servers, I'll have 4 zones - 3 for disk and 1 for tape.

I don't know of too many sites that don't have any performance problems but that's the nature of complex environments especially in an SSO environment.  I do have my tape traffic separated from my disk traffic both through zoning and configuration.

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Geyer, Gregory <Gregory.Geyer AT avnet DOT com> wrote:

I believe our SAN admin has one zone which includes all the tape drives and all the HBAs for the media servers.  Makes it easy for him.

But we have performance problems.  And there is one other zone I think with just a couple of HBAs in it that performs very well. I've been harping on zoning as a possible cause to our problems and have run across this in Brocade's Zoning Best Practice guide (link provided below).

Are there Netbackup environments out there with one large zone containing many HBAs on it that isn't having performance problems?  I've been trying to lobby to get that fixed, or at least tested further.

The meat of the pdf is:

The recommended grouping method for Zoning is Single Initiator Zoning (SIZ), sometimes
called “Single HBA Zoning.” With SIZ, each zone has only a single HBA and one or more
storage ports. If the HBA has both disk and tape storage devices, then you need to create two
zones: one zone with the HBA and the disk devices and a second zone with the HBA and the
tape devices. SIZ is optimal because it prevents any host-to-host interaction and limits RSCNs
to just the zones that need the information within the RSCN.

and the link:

http://www.boche.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/Zoning_Best_Practices_WP-00.pdf



.../Ed

Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD, SCSP, SCSE
ewilts AT ewilts DOT org
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu