Not that long ago I was faced with some of the same questions myself. There is a lot to learn in this area. Hopefully this will help you along. There are so many variables to SAN setup/configurations it will be hard to just give you simple direct answers. However, I'll give some replies to each (maybe it will get you going in the right direction). 1.Blades (or any servers) can connect varies ways to the SAN, but Fiber (fabric) or iSCSI (ip/switches) is the most common, this will also depend on your backplane on your Blade Center etc. 2. You normally create "Raid Groups / LUNS" on a SAN and then create Partitions / Volumes from the LUNS presented to your servers. Then use fdisk / mkfs and so on. 3. Step by step...will be hard as this can vary differently depending on your setup etc. and most people barley have time to document that for even their own setups. (See 4.) 4. Basic concept of SAN storage should really be in slot number #1. If you're very new to SAN technology there are some decent docs out there. Just search around. You'll also want to learn more about Fabric / Zoning and so on if using Fiber. Examples: http://www.brocade.com/san/evaluate/explore_solutions.jsp http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245470.html?Open IBM Redbook search results on SANS - http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/cgi-bin/searchsite.cgi?query=SAN Another important area you'll need to learn about is having Multiple Paths to your SAN. This allows for fail over and redundancy setups, on the server side your results will vary when using tools to manage the LUNS presented, you may see 2 disks when theres only 1 and so on. So you will need to figure out if your using native multipathing or something like Powerpath, which will also help with the persistent binding issue. Red Hat 5.1 - dm-multipathing info = http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/en-US/RHEL510/DM_Multipath/index.html(this also has some good examples of SAN practices) You'll also need to figure out / decide if your going to use LVM to mange your drives or just straight up ext3 mounts etc. (I would use generic ext3 at first until you mess with LVM) Red Hat 5.1 - LVM guide = http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/en-US/RHEL510/Cluster_Logical_Volume_Manager/index.html *NOTE:* If you do use LVM to manage your LUNS make sure you read up on backing up and import/export of the LVM data. Lets say your server caught on fire, I don't think you could re-mount your LUNS to another box and read the data without importing the LVM info. I could be wrong on this area as I've not tested it, but from my limited knowledge thus far.....you wouldn't be happy. If you're using Fiber HBA's, find out what model they are. There is a ton of ways to do this, but you can simply do a "sudo /sbin/lsmod" or how ever else you want. Then look up the vendor and dig up any docs you can on their product (it should be either Emulex or Qlogic). Depending on your cards/drivers etc you will need to be careful when updating to new kernels, yes the drivers for Emulex and Qlogic are native but if your accessing the SAN during boot (or booting from SAN) you might need to redo your initrd. Read more in your products driver installation instructions. This is by no means the only info you'll need, but as I said it should get you started. Get some Advil handy! HTH. On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Sakthivel <sarkdts@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi All, > > I have HP SAN box and IBM Blade center with SAN module. In Blade center > running OS is Oracle enterprise Linux 5 Update 1 ( 5.1) > I want to know( I am new to SAN Storage) > > 1. How to connect the IBM Blade to SAN ? > 2. How to create Partition in SAN box ? > 3. Please provide all the things with step by step > 4. Basic concept of SAN storage > > Thanks in advance > > Regards, > Sakthi > > > > -- > redhat-list mailing list > unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list > -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
