Dell CX4 manual Cabling a SAN-Attached Cluster to a Dell/EMC Storage System

Cabling a SAN-Attached Cluster to a Dell/EMC Storage System

The cluster nodes attach to the storage system using a redundant switch fabric and Fibre optic cables with duplex LC multimode connectors.

The switches, the HBA ports in the cluster nodes, and the SP ports in the storage system use duplex LC multimode connectors. The connectors consist of two individual fibre optic connectors with indexed tabs that must be inserted and aligned properly in the small form-factor pluggable (SFP) module connectors on the Fibre Channel switches and the connectors on the cluster nodes and storage systems.

Each HBA port is cabled to a port on a Fibre Channel switch. One or more cables connect from the outgoing ports on a switch to a storage processor on a Dell/EMC storage system.

Table 2-3 provides information for cabling your storage system to the Fibre Channel switches.

Table 2-3. Storage System Cabling Description

Storage System	Front-end Fibre	Fibre Optic	Cabling
	Channel ports per	Cables Required	Description
	SP

CX4-120, CX4-240	Two to six ports	Four to twelve
CX4-480	Four to eight ports	Eight to sixteen
CX4-960	Four to twelve	Eight to sixteen
	ports

Attach one cable from each storage processor port to the Fibre Channel switch.

NOTE: Adding more cables from the storage system to the switches can increase the I/O bandwidth and high availability of data. Although the CX4-960 has a maximum of 12 front-end fibre channel ports per SP, only 8 of them can be connected to fibre channel switches.

Figure 2-10 illustrates the method for cabling a SAN-attached cluster to the CX4-120 and CX4-240 storage systems.

Figure 2-11 illustrates a method for cabling a SAN-attached cluster to a CX4- 480 storage system.

Figure 2-12 illustrates a method for cabling a SAN-attached cluster to a CX4-960 storage system.

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Cabling Your Cluster Hardware