This topic describes the device drivers that are supported by the
storage subsystems in the SAN infrastructure.
For the clients, SAN File System requires either a single-pathing
or a multi-pathing device driver to communicate with the storage subsystems.
Single-pathing device drivers
A single-pathing
device driver allows for basic communication between the client machine
and a storage subsystem. You can use any standard single-pathing device drivers
that are supported by your storage subsystems. Optionally,
you can use a single-pathing device driver on any SAN File System client machine.
Multi-pathing device drivers
A multi-pathing
device driver allows multiple Fibre Channel paths to be connected to the
storage subsystem and to be managed for functions such as redundant-path failover
and load balancing. The multi-pathing device drivers you need on the clients
depends on the types of storage subsystems you have in the SAN environment:
- IBM® Enterprise
Storage System (ESS) 800 and F20
- Subsystem Device Driver (SDD) version 1.5.1
- IBM TotalStorage® SAN
Volume Controller 2145
- Subsystem Device Driver (SDD) version 1.5.1
- IBM TotalStorage DS4300
Turbo (FAStT600T), DS4400 (FAStT700), and DS4500 (FAStT900) running firmware
version 8.40
- RDAC for FAStT firmware version 9.0
Note: - All metadata servers that are attached to a FAStT in the same storage
pool must run the RDAC multi-pathing device driver for
coordinated controller failover.
- RDAC is supported for all SAN File System client platforms
except Red Hat Enterprise Linux™ Advanced Server 3.0. Consider using
a single-path device driver on the client that runs on the Red Hat Linux platform. For Solaris 9 (64-bit), RDAC is available through a Request for
Price Quote (RPQ) and limits the LUN partitions to 32.
- Using RDAC firmware lower than version 8.41 has these limitations:
- You are limited to 32 LUNs per partition.
- You cannot run SDD and RDAC simultaneously on Windows® platforms.