Visio by DPTPB: 4-Node NetApp AFF A700 Fabric MetroCluster sample drawing

I’ve haven’t had pleasure to design a solution based on AFF A700 platform yet, maybe one glorious day… Quite often performance / capacity requirements can be fulfilled with lesser platforms like AFF A300 or even AFF A200.

Since NetApp is both scale up and scale out solution many non-metrocluster setups requiring performance and/or scale of single AFF A700 HA-pair, could also be built by using multiple AFF A300 / AFF A200 HA-pairs. With Metrocluster scale out capability is more limited with options for 2-node, 4-node or 8-node setups, so MetroCluster might be one use case where using AFF A700 is more likely.

To get more familiar with AFF A700 platform I decided to make this drawing. This gave me also opportunity to test my new V2 AFF A700 / FAS 9000 stencils.

Lessons learned:

Both Atto FC ports can be used

It is now supported to connect both FC ports on Atto Bridges to provide more bandwidth to disk shelves. Additionally I’ve used quad-path SAS cabling for shelf-to-shelf connections.

Using two FC links per Atto requires slight tuning to my Atto and FC Switch stencils. Pre-populated port list used are not built to accomodate this. I’ve manually edited the port list in the sample drawing for the Back-End SAN switch.  I will update stencils later to contain these port lists

Also port assingment box for Atto bridge was not built to accomodate Quad-Path SAS cabling. Only dual-path SAS cabling information is displayed.

Quad-Port FCVI Adapter

FCVI Adapter with AFF A700 and FAS 9000 is a four-port adapter (as opposed with lesser platfroms where FCVI adapter is dual-port adapte)r. This gives more bandwidth to FCVI connections (used to mirror NVRAM content from site-to-site).

40GbE Adapters and Cluster Interconnect links

 

By default AFF A700 / FAS9000 platform uses 40GbE links for Cluster Interconnect connectivity. It is supported to use a single 40GbE adapter per controller, but I’ve decided to make more resilient configuration by using two 40GbE adapters per controller to protect against adapter failure.

But using only one 40GbE port toward Cluster Interconnect network. This leaves two 40GbE ports per controller for host side connections.

40GbE Adapters with AFF A700 platform are dual-asic adapters unlike 40GbE adapters used with AFF A700s platform, which are single-asic adapters. Single ASIC adapter limits total bandwidth available to the adapter to 40GbE. If both ports are used in 40GbE mode, you can only get 40GbE of throughput, even if the nominal combined speed of those ports is 2 x 40GbE = 80GbE. If you split a AFF A700s 40GbE adapter port into 4 x 10GbE connections, the other port on 40GbE adapter is disabled due to lack of available throughput.

With Dual-ASIC design used with AFF A700 40GbE adapter you will actually get full 40GbE bandwidth to both ports at the same time. This makes it also possible to use one port at 40GbE while the other one is operating in 4 x 10GbE mode with break-out cable. (as seen in the sample drawing, e4e,e4f,e4g,e4h & e8e,e8f,e8f,e8h ports).

I had to also update port lists for 10GbE switches to have e,f,g and h ports for other adapters than onboard ports. I will update ports lists next time I update switch stencils.

Downloads

Please visit NetApp Downloads page or use these direct links to PDF and Visio versions of the sample drawing