SAN Network Requirements

For all Pivot3 Appliances

June 2013
 Network Requirements

Switch and network configuration requirements

* These requirements are specific to switches and switch ports that are used by the two SAN ports
(NIC0 & NIC1) of all Pivot3 Appliances.

What type of network switch should I use with my iSCSI SAN?

Only use Enterprise class switches for the SAN network. The “approved” switches in Table 2 would be
an example of good performing Enterprise class switches. Actual performance of your switches will be
vendor and product implementation-specific. It is a good idea to check with the switch manufacturer or
your systems integrator regarding specific support capabilities. You should ask the following questions:
 Which switches do they support for your application and why do they recommend any particular
switch over another?
 What are their requirements and recommendations for isolating SAN traffic from LAN traffic?
 Should you use a switch with cut-through routing or store-and-forward?
When comparing network switches, look at the latency numbers and the performance criteria for your
application. For storage switching, low latency and data integrity are very important.

Table 1: Key network switch specifications

Specification Notes
Forwarding modes Store and Forward
Non-blocking
Latency < 6us for 64-byte frames
Network standards - IEEE 802.3ab 1000BASE-T
Ability to increase switch For optimal performance, utilize switches that allow the
port buffers configuration of transmit buffer sizes. Transmit buffers of 256KB
and larger for Appliance ports will provide the best results.

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 Network Requirements

Table 2: Tested Switches

IPv6
Switch Acceptance
Support
Model Not
Manufacturer Series Approved
Tested Approved

Alcatel Lucent OmniSwitch 6855-24 Yes √

Allied Telesis X610 All Yes √
Cisco Catalyst 3750 & 3750G Yes √
Cisco Catalyst 2975 Yes √
CBL Systems All All X
Power
Dell Connect 2824 No √
Power
Dell Connect 5424 Yes √
Power
Dell Connect 8024F1 Yes √
Dell Force10 S4810P1 Yes √
D-Link All DGS-3627 X
Enterasys B B3G124-48 No √
Enterasys C C5K125-48 Yes √
Enterasys D D2G124-12P No √
Enterasys Matrix N-7 √
SSA-T4068-
Enterasys S 0252 Yes √
HP E 3500 Yes √
HP E 2510 No √
HP E 2520 No √
Linksys All All X
JGS524 &
NetGear Pro Safe JGS5216 No √
Nortel Bay Stack 5510 Yes √
SMC Tiger Switch SMC8124PL2 Yes √
1. Tested with copper SFP+ interconnect cables from Force10.

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 Network Requirements

Table 3: System Networking Requirements

Requirement Description
Use the appropriate Use Category 6, Category 6a or Category 5e cables that are a
network cabling maximum of 75 feet in length. Pivot3 Appliances only support
UTP Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T) connections.
Use appropriate switched,
Ethernet network
Cloudbanks, Databanks, You must connect Appliances to a switched network and make
vSTAC Watch & sure that all network connections to the Appliances are set to
vSTAC BigData Gigabit Ethernet speed (1000 Megabits per second). Appliances
will not operate at link rates lower than Gigabit Ethernet speed.
Set all ports on the switches that connect to NIC0 & NIC1 on the
Pivot3 Appliances to 1000/full-duplex to avoid potential auto-
negotiation conflicts between switches and Appliances.

vSTAC VDI Requires 10GbE connectivity.

Configure both network Appliances require two Gigabit Ethernet connections to differing
interfaces on each subnets/switches. Be sure to connect the same physical ports
Appliance (top/bottom or left/right) to the same switch across all your
Appliances (for instance, all left-most ports should connect to
switch 1 and all right-most ports should connect to switch 2).
Pivot3 Appliances are not link-aggregation aware, and will not
participate with 802.3ad link aggregation switch configurations.
Each of the two network interfaces in an Appliance will be in a
separate subnet (shared with corresponding network interfaces
in other Appliances and physical servers) and should be
connected to different physical switches for high availability and
the best performance.
For Array creation, two active network connections to differing
subnets/switches must be available on each Appliance. After the
Array creation, the Appliances can operate sub-optimally on a
single switch or a single network interface if a switch or network
interface failure occurs.
All devices within a subnet While a large Pivot3 environment (multiple Arrays) can span
must be in the same multiple switches an individual Pivot3 Array needs to be
broadcast domain/logical configured where all the SAN0 NIC ports will be on one physical
switch switch and all of SAN1 another.
If multiple switches are required to support a single
subnet/broadcast domain of Pivot3 Appliances and standalone
servers, ensure that the additional switches are in the same
broadcast domain by utilizing trunking or backplane connections.

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 Network Requirements

Appliance connectivity to Appliances do not require network connectivity to the Internet. It

the Internet is not required may be helpful for the Management Station hosting RAIGE
Director or vSTAC Manager to have Internet access.

Table 4: Specific Switch Requirements

Recommendation Description
IPv6 Routing Support vSTAC appliances use IPv6 routing for communications between
the appliances.
Not required for Cloudbanks and Databanks
Disable jumbo frames Pivot3 Appliances do not support jumbo frames. If your switches
support are configurable, ensure that other devices on the switches
cannot transmit jumbo frames by disabling jumbo frames support
in the switches
Disable Spanning-Tree Disable Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP). RAIGE Arrays will function
Protocol with or without STP enabled. Enabling STP can introduce delays
with NIC link establishments. If STP is required, it is
recommended that an enhanced STP implementation that allows
fast port state transitions (like Fast-Start or Cisco PortFast) be
used to reduce STP forwarding state transition delays.
Disable unicast storm Disable unicast and broadcast/multicast storm controls. Not all
control switches provide storm control functionality.
Disable IGMP snooping Turn off IGMP snooping as it may interfere with Array operations
Segment non-iSCSI devices If switches will be shared with non-iSCSI network devices, utilize
via VLANs VLANS to isolate iSCSI traffic from other traffic. Appliances are
not 802.1Q VLAN tag aware, so any VLANs created must be
untagged to/from Appliances. Pivot3 does not recommend using
a single VLAN’ed switch for both Appliance interfaces since it
degrades performance and introduces single points of failure.
Turn off/disable Flow Enabling flow control on the switch can result in additional
Control network latency as a result of data transfer interruptions.

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