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EMC Fibre Channel Storage System Model FC4700 Configuration Planning Guide
About Fibre Channel FC4700 Storage Systems and Storage Networks
host-bus adapters, specified by worldwide name), and SPs between
which the switch fabric will allow communication.
However, switch zoning cannot selectively control data access to
LUNs in a storage system, because each SP appears as a single Fibre
Channel device to the switch fabric. So switch zoning can prevent or
allow communication with an SP, but not with specific disks or LUNs
attached to an SP. For access control with LUNs, a different solution is
required: Storage Groups.
Storage Groups A Storage Group is one or more LUNs (logical units) within a storage
system that is reserved for one or more servers and is inaccessible to
other servers. Storage Groups are the central component of shared
storage; storage systems that are unshared do not use Storage
Groups.
When you configure shared storage, you specify servers and the
Storage Group(s) each server can read from and/or write to. The Base
Software running in each storage system enforces the
server-to-Storage Group permissions.
A Storage Group can be accessed by more than one server if all the
servers run cluster software. The cluster software enforces orderly
access to the shared Storage Group LUNs.
The following figure shows a simple shared storage configuration
consisting of one storage system with two Storage Groups. One
Storage Group serves a cluster of two servers running the same
operating system, and the other Storage Group serves a UNIX®
database server. Each server is configured with two independent
paths to its data, including separate host bus adapters, switches, and
SPs, so there is no single point of failure for access to its data.