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18 BP1038| Best Practices and Guidelines for Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 into an Existing SAN
8 Planning and design considerations
8.1 Network ports
Each FS7600 controller contains a total of eight 1GbE ports that must be connected for optimal
performance. A total of 16 network ports are required for each controller pair. Each FS7610 controller
contains a total of four 10GbE ports or a total of eight ports for each controller pair. As a best practice for
EqualLogic SANs, Dell recommends that the LAN and SAN should be physically separated.
For maximum availability, it is recommended that both the LAN and SAN have redundancy in the switches.
Connections from the FS7600 or FS7610 can be staggered across redundant switches in a stack or LAG or
staggered across modules in a chassis so that a single switch (or module) failure does not prevent
connectivity from the client to the NAS controller or from the controller to the SAN storage.
Figure 7 Rear view of FS7600 appliance showing network ports
On each FS7600 controller there are four ports for client connectivity and on each FS7610 there are two
ports. The LAN ports must be connected to switches to allow CIFS and NFS client connectivity. The LAN
ports can be configured for one of two modes, the default being Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB). LACP
(IEEE 802.3ad) mode can also be used, but it requires further configuration of the network switches (on
the LAN or client side) to support it. A total of eight 1Gb RJ-45 LAN switch ports are required for each
FS7600 NAS Appliance (controller pair) or four 10Gb SFP+ ports for each FS7610 NAS Appliance.
On the SAN, there are four 1 Gb ports per FS7600 controller for iSCSI connectivity. The FS7610 requires
two SAN connected 10Gb ports for each controller or a total of four for each controller pair. Some internal
communication such as heartbeat between controllers and file system replication between FS Series
appliances uses the SAN. The SAN switches should not be configured to block IPv6 or IPv6 multicasting as
this is needed for some internal operations. Cache-mirroring between NAS controllers in a single chassis
occurs over a PCI-express (PCIe) connection that is internal to the FS Series appliance chassis.