There are several hardware and software prerequisites that must
be confirmed before installing SAN File System.
Prerequisites
Before installing SAN File System,
there are hardware and software prerequisites that must be provided. Lists
of requirements and considerations follow:
- Requirements
- No software may be installed on the metadata servers or the master console
that is not part of the preinstalled SAN File System software except for antivirus
packages and Virtual Network Computing (VNC). (There is no antivirus requirement
for Metadata servers.
- The SAN configuration should not have a single point of failure. This
means that connectivity should be planned to ensure that the loss of an HBA,
switch, GBIC, fibre cable, or storage controller can not cause complete loss
of connectivity of SAN File System with the storage subsystem.
- SAN File System metadata servers must have access to all data and metadata
LUNs.
- Separate fabrics should be used for metadata server connectivity. By creating
two distinct, non-overlapping paths from each metadata server to storage,
more LUNs are possible. If the paths are connected using the same fabric,
intra-fabric path overlap would cause four or more paths to be seen by the
metadata server, cutting in half the number of useable LUNs.
- The SAN File System clients must have access to all data LUNs and must
be prevented from having access to metadata LUNs.
- Data LUNs must be able to be shared among hosts that are based on different
operating systems.
- SAN File System metadata server traffic between the SAN network and the
storage array must be segregated from the SAN File System client traffic traveling
that same path.
- HBAs for both clients and servers must be isolated from each other to
avoid problems associated with them logging in as both hosts and targets.
- SAN File System fabrics should be isolated from non-SAN File System fabrics
on which administrative activities could occur. Administrative activities
on switches can affect all users of a switch, even if proper hard zones are
present.
- Considerations
- Client software requirements
- Number of clients
- Number of engines per file system
- Number of file systems per client
- Size and number of LUNs
- LDAP server requirements
- Network requirements, type and connectivity
- SAN attachment requirements
- NFS requirements
- Supported disk subsystems
- Supported client hardware
- Application requirements
- Maximum file size
- Maximum number of files
- Additional recommendations
- Client-cluster and intra-cluster communication traffic are expected to
be on the customer LAN.
- All nodes must be on the same physical network.
- All hardware engines are expected to be on the same physical network.
- If multiple subnets are configured on the physical network, it is recommended
that all nodes be on the same subnet.
- The Remote Supervisory Adapter (RSA II) card network port is expected
to be on the same physical network.
- It is recommended that routers and gateways not exist between the client
machines and the metadata server engines.