Open-systems hosts

You can attach the system to open-systems hosts by using one of several methods.

The following methods are available:
  • The Small Computer System Interface-Fibre Channel Protocol (SCSI-FCP)
  • The NVMe over Fibre Channel Protocol (FC-NVMe)
  • The iSCSI hosts that use the system Ethernet ports
  • The iSER (iSCSI Extensions for RDMA) hosts that use the RDMA capable iWARP (Internet Wide Area RDMA) or RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) Ethernet ports.
  • Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) host attachment (FCoE to Fibre Channel target or FCoE end to end)

Hosts that use the Fibre Channel connections are attached to the system either directly or through a switched Fibre Channel fabric. Each port on a node is identified by a worldwide port name (WWPN). The port limits are now shared between Fibre Channel WWPNs and iSCSI names.

The system does not limit the number of Fibre Channel ports or host bus adapters (HBAs) that each connected host or host partition can have. Your connected hosts are limited only by the number of ports or HBAs that are supported by the multipathing device driver on the host or host partition.

The following website provides current interoperability information. This information includes current support information, such as maximum configuration details, technical flashes, hints, and tips, host systems, operating system levels, HBAs, cables, and fabrics. It also includes documentation about the system:

www.ibm.com/support

Note: iSCSI or iSER hosts that are attached with the FCIP ports in the fabric are supported when the system is in a nonfailover configuration. However, the multipathing support that is available with iSCSI or iSER configurations does not necessarily provide failover and path recovery for SAN fabric path changes or failures. A concurrent update to the system can cause errors on an iSCSI or iSER host that has multipathing enabled. If multipathing is not configured on the iSCSI or iSER driver, you must configure a single path only from the system to the host. This result can be achieved by zoning a single system port from each I/O group to the iSCSI or iSER host. In this configuration, a system update is disruptive to the host.