HP P6000 Continuous Access Implementation Guide (T3680-96431, August 2012)

NOTE:
• For more information about the connections used to implement this configuration, see “A single
physical fabric” (page 66). The five fabric configurations can be physically separate fabrics
(see Figure 24 (page 62)) or a single physical fabric zoned into five logical fabrics using
switch zoning (see Figure 27 (page 66)).
• When creating an intersite FCIP link using B-series or C-series routers, the respective LSAN
and IVR functionality can provide SAN traffic routing over the FCIP connection while preventing
the merging of the two sites' fabrics in to a single fabric. LSANs and IVR enable logical fabric
separation of the two sites, ensuring that a change on one site's fabric does not affect the
other site.
The HP FCIP Distance Gateways (MPX110) will allow the fabrics on both sites to merge into
a single large fabric. SAN traffic isolation can still be accomplished with the FCIP Distance
Gateways using SAN zoning, but this will not provide fabric separation. When using the FCIP
Distance Gateways, fabric configuration changes should be made carefully, and it may be
desirable to disable the ISL until all changes are complete and the fabric is stable.
• If you use FCIP, use the same model FCIP gateway at each location.
• To compensate for the SPOF in a five-fabric solution (the intersite link), HP recommends that
availability be a QoS metric on the intersite link.
• The first Fibre Channel switch at each end of an FC-to-IP gateway (the first hop) should be
same model and software version. This avoids interoperability issues because the MPX will
merge the fabrics.
Figure 9 Five-fabric configuration
6. Host I/O fabric—blue1. Data center 1
7. Host I/O fabric—gold2. Data center 2
8. Dedicated replication fabric3. LAN connection
9. Intersite link4. Management server
10. Dual-controller arrays5. Hosts
30 Planning the remote replication fabric