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Deciding whether to use the FC Configuration for ESX Express Guide

This guide describes how to quickly set up the FC service on a storage virtual machine (SVM), provision a LUN, and make the LUN available as a datastore using an FC HBA on an ESX host computer.

This guide is based on the following assumptions:

  • You want to use best practices, not explore every available option.
  • You do not want to read a lot of conceptual background.

  • You want to use ThinkSystem™ Storage Manager for DM Series, not the ONTAP command-line interface or an automated scripting tool.

    Cluster Management Using ThinkSystem Storage Manager for DM Series

  • You are using a supported version of Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere to configure storage settings for your ESX host and to provision the datastores.
  • Your network uses IPv4 addressing.

  • You are using traditional FC HBAs on ESXi 5.x and traditional FC switches.

    This guide does not cover FCoE.

  • You have at least two FC target ports available on each node in the cluster.

    Onboard FC and UTA2 (also called CNA) ports, as well as some adapters are configurable. Configuring those ports is done in the ONTAP CLI and is not covered in this guide.

  • You are not configuring FC SAN boot.

  • You are creating datastores on the host.

    This guide does not cover raw device mapping (RDM) disks or using N-port ID virtualization (NPIV) to provide FC directly to VMs.

If these assumptions are not correct for your situation, you should see the following resources: