3PAR P7000-series and Fibre Channel Connections

[audiojim]

3PAR Noob here!

I'm in the process of working with a vendor to get a 3PAR quote for our 2015 budget (to hopefully spend in January). I'm asking this question here for another (experienced) viewpoint, but I'll throw in some context, too:

We currently have 6 nodes of HP P4300 G1/G2 (2 G1 and 4 G2) using 300GB 15k RPM drives. This is connected to a pair of Dell R720 ESXi 5.5 hosts and one "utility" R710 that has Veeam on it. Everything is connected via 1Gbps iSCSI with multiple connections to the hosts and everything is split for failover through a pair of dedicated switches. I feel quite comfortable with all of that, but this will be my first experience with FC. Which brings me to this:

Given our small number of hosts (3), if we add the 4-port 8Gb FC expansion cards to the controllers of a 7200c, could we not be able to directly connect everything and skip the redundant pair of FC switches??? I got the sense that HP doesn't officially support this setup (as in it hasn't been fully tested?)? At least that's what the HP storage specialist was implying on our conference call.

Point-to-point. Direct connection. Call it what you like. Is this doable with a 2-controller and 3-host setup? Pros? Cons?

P.S. I'm still assuming two FC connections for each host.

Thanks!
-Jim

[Schmoog]

Hp calls this flat san, and it is 100% supported. No fc switches required!

[wagnerse]

Hello, from my point of view flat san is only supported with Blade enclosures and virtual connect modules. I do not remember that direct attached servers are supported. Technically it should work.
I would ask HP to clarify that.

[cali]

Take a look in:
HP 3PAR VMware ESX Implementation Guide (Dec 2014)

Fibre Channel connections are supported between the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage and the ESX
host in both a fabric-attached and direct-connect topology.

But the $ diff between 2x 3PAR 4-Port FC HBAs and 2x Brocade 8/8 SAN Switch is not as mutch.
If you use SAN Switches, you will get the "Persistance Ports Feature" and allibity to ad more Hosts. If needed and you can simply do a Mirror or "Peer Motion" in a later time.

The HP 8/8 Base (0) e-port SAN Switch costs the same $ as the HP 3PAR 7000 4-pt 8Gb/s FC Adapter.
Only the 10 SPF (10x 180$ List Price) are the additional costs, so there is realy no need to think about direct connect.

[audiojim]

Hello, from my point of view flat san is only supported with Blade enclosures and virtual connect modules. I do not remember that direct attached servers are supported. Technically it should work.
I would ask HP to clarify that.

Yeah, referencing their Blade chassises seemed to be the only place I could find info on this.

[JohnMH]

FlatSAN uses the VirtualConnect Flex Fabric modules in place of fabric switches, so from a server perspective it looks like a direct connect environment. In a blade environment you've already handled the fan in of HBA's at the chassis level so it's no longer a 1 to 1 mapping of ports, so why have relatively expensive intervening switches if you're simply going from blade to storage.

Outside of a FlatSAN environment yes you can go direct connect with qualified HBA's however as above, the small switches provide almost as low entry cost and you can license additional ports on demand, so why wouldn't you do it that way and provide yourself flexibility going forward. Even in such a small environment FC will be as simple if not simpler to manage than iSCSI is today without the potential downsides.

[audiojim]

Yeah, it always pays (or saves!) to review the items in a quote.

At first they had the 4-port FC expansion modules AND one FC HP B-series switch with 16 ports enabled (we need a total of 10 ports) on it...

uhh...

I had already noted the lack of redundancy at the switch level if we went that way, but it hadn't donned on me that when going with two, we could drop back to 8-port switches AND drop the 4-port expansion modules.

Now, to be fair to the vendor, this was just more of a all-options (even including 7200c vs 7400c) parts list and I'm hoping to get the actual quote today, but this thread has really helped me steer our build in the right direction.

Thanks!!!
-Jim