I further checked the virtual machines been power on in the ESX servers, which show all the VM were continue running without system crash or rebooted. Now I realize that the failure on SAN switch may not necessary result system crash or hung, in fact it may allow you resume the system state once the SAN switch are back online, of course, this is no guarantee assumption, just some surprise finding experienced yesterday would like to share here.

Related posts:

1. High Consolidation ratio in Virtualization
2. Cisco NetApp VMware Announce First Secure Multi-Tenancy Solution
3. SAN Zoning configuration on Cisco UCS

Beside unified storage, we are looking forward for unified computing system for the server compute platform too. Cisco had moved ahead of their competitor to bring this to the world and it is 1 fo the great platform that get attraction and adoption worldwide. Cisco UCS or Nexus 5000 both provide the unified I/O capabilities and allow us to transform the data center architecture today. Beside consolidating LAN and SAN into 1 with FCoE, the more interesting capabilities that get attention by us are the switching capacity.

The Nexus 5000 or UCS 6140 switches supported up to 1.14 Tbits/s and this number are more than enough to consolidate all the necessary traffic it need to be delivered by the LAN & SAN. If you have this solution in place today and well integrated with the unified storage as well as the core networking environment, you can easily choose to run NAS, ISCSI or FC through the same Unified frabics and Unified Storage you have. As everyone know, there are no perfect solution or protocol for every scenario, but now, you will able to choose the right protocol for every different computing system, application and database requirement without implementing separate ISCSI, NFS or FC physical infrastructure.

This is a nice picture to summarize the description about Unified Platform which I get it from http://viewyonder.com

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1. FCoE End to End Solution with Cisco Nexus 5000 and Netapp Storage
2. Server Virtualization & Cloud Computing Model
3. Cisco NetApp VMware Announce First Secure Multi-Tenancy Solution

You can have a full view about the VCN alliance details from here.

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1. FCoE End to End Solution with Cisco Nexus 5000 and Netapp Storage
2. Vblock and VCE Join Venture
3. NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VSC) for ESX ready for Download

If you are netapp existing customers, you can download the software from here

Below is the summary I link from Netapp official blog site

Summary of supported functionality in the 1.0 release includes:

• Support for ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0 hosts.
• Limited support for ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 hosts (listed and details provided, but setting not set – requires using EHU for host settings)
• Viewing the status of storage controllers from a SAN (FC, iSCSI) perspective.
• Viewing the status of storage controllers from a NAS (NFS) perspective.
• Viewing the status of ESX hosts, including ESX version and overall status.
• Checking at a glance whether the following are configured correctly, and if not, automatically setting the correct values without needing to access the ESX console. You can select multiple ESX hosts and update settings for all hosts with a single command.
• Storage adapter timeouts
• Multipathing settings
• NFS settings
• Collecting diagnostic information from the ESX hosts, storage controllers, and Fibre Channel switches.
• Tools to identify and correct misaligned disk partitions (MBR Tools)
• Tools to set proper guest operating system disk timeout values

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1. Netapp Data Ontap 8
2. SRM 4 is ready for VMware vSphere 4

Each server above will be connected to Nexus 5000 through CNA (Converge Network Adaptor) which provide FCoE and 10GE at the single connection. The Netapp FAS 3140 are connected to Nexus 5000 with FCoE interfaces which provide end to end solution from servers to switches, switches to storage. FC switch are not required to be in placed to allow servers communication to storage in this architecture. You can choose either NFS, FCoE or ISCSI in this configuration. The above picture is for reference and do not meant in very details as I am rush up the drawing about this post. EMC will soon officially launch the storage to support FCoE. I believe this will be the future strategy for Data Center & Storage solution. In Cisco UCS, you will still require FC switch in place as the UCS 6100 interconnect does not meant the full capable FCoE switch as Nexus 5000 did. I think the new architecture are suitable for new and clean deployment and large scale virtualization. It help to reduce the massive cabling, and achieve the throughput requirements needed by the virtualization.

Picture above is Traditional Network and SAN environment VS FCoE for reference purpose

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1. High Level Cisco UCS architecture
2. Server Virtualization & Cloud Computing Model
3. Cisco UCS C Series Rack Server

NetApp Data Motion – NetApp’s new data motion technology allows enterprises to move data nondisruptively across storage systems with zero application downtime. Now customers can eliminate the impact of planned maintenance outages in virtualized multi-tenant environments. NetApp Data Motion is the first solution of its kind in the storage industry and builds upon the NetApp unified storage architecture to greatly enhance availability for both internal and external cloud customers.
Performance Acceleration Module II – The second-generation Performance Acceleration Module, a family of flash technology-based catching modules, provides an innovation, alternative use of flash/SSD technology rather than using SSds in disk shelves. Customers can cost-effectively improve performance across a broader set of workloads without straining their existing infrastructure. Tests conducted by NetApp with an Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) workload show that customers can cost-effectively increase I/O throughput by approximately 78% and speed response time by approximately 30%. These gains were achieved using less than 1% more power and no additional rack space.

NetApp Dynamic Data Center (NDDC) Solution – The NetApp dynamic data center solution is comprised of three components to provide customers with a proven and tested solution for delivering ITaaS. The first component is a service-oriented infrastructure (SOI) that leverages NetApp’s industry-leading technologies. The standardized architecture allows customers to consume and deploy storage, network, and compute resources in a repeatable manner to reduce costs and increase service levels. NetApp offers these shared resources through a service catalog to deliver infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to end users. A second component includes a service management framework that provides processes and best practices to help manage the infrastructure and reduce fixed costs wherever possible. The last component is a delivery methodology that leverages NetApp Professional Services and NetApp systems integrator partners to deploy ITaaS infrastructures efficiently and with the least risk to customers.