Primary Storage

Hello All,

We have a IBM V7000 Gen 2 connected to Fabrics A, B.

The V7000 has 2 nodes with IO group io_grp0 configured for vdisk access for all hosts. Each node has 4 FC ports, 2 to Fabric A, 2 to Fabric B

All the hosts are connected to V7000 are dual zoned, pathed and redundant via fabric A and B to the V7000 with multipaths configured.

Since the V7000 is getting old, we want to perform migrate it to another storage vendor which is connected to Fabrics C and D. Fabrics C and D are different to Fabrics A and B.

I would like take 2 (if possible) or 1 FC host ports each from each of the V7000 nodes and connect it to Fabrics C and D. This would mean we will loose path resilience (redundancy) to fabrics A and B for the duration of the migration.

My question is , are the Vdisks which are presented currently via fabrics A and B. Do these have any affinity to any particular FC ports on the nodes?

So if we were to disconnect 1 or 2 FC ports per node , will this have any affect to host access?

Hi,

In IBM V7000 systems (i.e. Spectrum Virtualize) there is no such thing as FC port affinity or so. You can check the available/estabilished links with lsfabric command.

However there is a possibility to mask out some ports to present the vdisk to hosts, but the default is to present them by all the available ports.

So first You need to check should there is any port masking customization. Enable them all, which is the default. Adjust the zoning. I mean I would remove any alias or zone configuration for the ports to be removed from the "old" fabrics. Then You are safe to move the cables between the fabrics.

New features in Spectrum Virtualize 8.5:

There is a new feature as "Fibre Channel portset", where you can group (limit access) hosts to portsets.

More details can be found here:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/flashsystem-5x00/8.4.x?topic=overview-portsets