Release Notes

Blade server chassis integration
58 Dell PS Series Configuration Guide
11.1 Designing a SAN using blade chassis I/O modules with arrays
There are three categories of SAN designs for M1000e blade chassis integration:
• Blade IOM switch only (Direct-Attached): Network ports of both the hosts and storage are
connected to the M1000e blade IOM switches. No Top of Rack (ToR) switches are required. The
switch interconnect can be a stack or a LAG, and no uplink is required.
• ToR switch only (Pass-Through): Network ports of both the hosts and the storage are connected to
external ToR switches. Pass-through IOM are used in place of blade IOM switches in the M1000e
blade chassis. The switch interconnect can be a stack, a LAG, or VLT.
• Blade IOM switch with ToR switch (Two-Tier): Host network ports are connected to the M1000e
blade IOM switches and the storage network ports are connected to ToR switches. The switch
interconnect can be a stack, a LAG, or VLT and should connect the ToR switch to better facilitate
inter-array member traffic. An uplink stack, LAG or VLT interconnect from the blade IOM switch tier to
the ToR switch tier is also required.
For a detailed description of integrating blade chassis with PS Series arrays read:
• Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade and EqualLogic PS Series 10 GbE SAN Design Best Practices
• Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade Enclosure and Dell PS Series SAN Design Best Practices Using Dell
S-Series and M-Series Networking (includes best practices for Data Center Bridging environments)