Supported device drivers

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.
Refer to the following Web site for current information about multi-pathing device drivers, including release and firmware levels:

www.ibm.com/storage/support/sanfs/

Parent topic: Client prerequisites

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