MDS SAN and scaling with bladeservers

How are others dealing with the issue of keeping the SAN fabric simple by using as few inter-switch links as possible and using optical passthrough in the bladecenters vs using SAN switching in the bladecenters and have what I view to be a more complex SAN? I understand that the Nexxus has some interesting tools to address this, but I'll be using MDS 9500's for the forseeable future.

Reply to
David Friedl
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David Friedl schrieb:

If you are already using MDS in the core SAN, you might want to look at the embedded MDS blade switches in the bladecenters.

With the NPV feature in these switches (basically the same as an MDS9124 in just another form factor) you can easily scale blade installations because the embedded switches do not use up domain ids. Features like Flexattach and the upcoming F-port trunking and F-Port portchannelling allow you more flexibility than mere passthrough. And you have VSAN capabilities down to the blades.

Also with embedded MDS switches you have additional troubleshooting capabilities that you don't have with passthrough (e.g. SPAN).

Ralf

Reply to
Ralf Eberhardt

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