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Connectivity considerations
13 Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series and VMware vSphere | 3922-BP-VM
Zoning Fibre Channel switches for vSphere ESXi hosts is essentially no different than zoning any other hosts
to the ME4 Series array.
Zoning rules and recommendations:
• The ME4 Series array and ESXi hosts should be connected to two different Fibre Channel switches
(fabrics) for high availability and redundancy.
• Name zoning using WWNs is recommended.
• When defining the zones, it is a best practice to use single-initiator (host port), multiple-target (ME4
ports) zones. For example, for each Fibre Channel HBA port on the server, create a server zone that
includes the HBA port WWN and all the physical WWNs on the ME4 Series array controllers on the
same fabric. See Table 1 for an example.
Fibre Channel zoning examples
Fabrics
(dual-switch configuration)
FC HBA port
(dual-port HBA configuration)
ME4 FC ports
(FC port configuration)
Fabric one zone
Port 0
A0, B0, A2, B2
Fabric two zone
Port 1
A1, B1, A3, B3
Note: It is recommended to use name zoning and create single-initiator, multiple-target zones.
3.3 Physical port selection
In a system configured to use all FC or all iSCSI, but where only two ports are needed, use ports 0 and 2 or
ports 1 and 3 to ensure better I/O balance on the front end. This is because ports 0 and 1 share a converged
network controller chip, and ports 2 and 3 share a separate converged network controller chip.