Technical information

June 2012 Dell EqualLogic Configuration Guide v13.2 60
Table 26 Single M1000e Enclosure Stacking Dual Fabric
Dual Fabric Stacked Configuration
Advantages Concerns
•
Ensures that Ethernet SAN ports on each
blade server will be distributed across
two different mezzanine cards for a
more highly available solution
•
Does not adhere to recommended
practices for M1000e blade IO
configuration
• Upgrading switch FW will require
scheduled downtime for SAN network
As discussed earlier, one of the concerns when creating a SAN that consists of a single stack is that a
single stack does not provide for a highly available solution when attempting to perform switch
maintenance such as switch firmware updates. If there is a requirement that the SAN solution cannot
be brought down for regularly scheduled maintenance, then stacking may not be the right option and
you should consider link aggregation methods for switch interconnect.
Table 27 and Table 28 illustrate the non-stacking strategies between the two IO modules in each of
these two configurations as previously described.