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

Six-fabric configuration
The six-fabric configuration shown in Figure 11 (page 33) consists of two fabrics that are dedicated
to replication and four fabrics that are dedicated to I/O between the hosts and arrays.
Figure 12 (page 34) shows the same configuration using FC-to-IP for the replication fabrics.
NOTE:
• For more information about the connections used to implement this configuration, see “Dual
physical fabric with six zones” (page 67). The six fabric configurations can be physically
separate fabrics (see Figure 25 (page 63) and Figure 26 (page 64)) or two physical fabric
zoned into six logical fabrics using switch zoning (see Figure 28 (page 68) and
Figure 29 (page 69)).
• 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 into 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.
• In a six-fabric configuration, each HP P6000 Continuous Access relationship must include at
least one eight-port controller pair.
• 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.
• If you use FCIP, use the same model FCIP gateway at each location.
In this example, four local and remote fabrics (6 and 7 at each site) are dedicated to host I/O. At
the same time, there are separate redundant fabrics made up of switches (8 and 10) and two
intersite links (9 and 11).
32 Planning the remote replication fabric