March 2013 Dell EqualLogic Configuration Guide v14.1 9-93
Table 37 Non-stacked, multiple M1000e enclosure direct connect SAN
Non-Stacked, Multiple M1000e Enclosure Configuration
Advantages Concerns
Required for non-stacking M-Series I/O
modules to support direct attached arrays.
• Array firmware can be updated without SAN
being brought down for maintenance
Spanning tree protocol will block one link to
prevent a loop
• Spanning tree may change if M-series I/O
modules are uplinked to other switches
(such as when attempting replication to
remote data center).
• Requires more cables than stacked solutions
Other notes
Should only use 10GbE links for this strategy to ensure adequate bandwidth between modules
and enclosures.
• Limited scalability due to potentially excessive hop-counts and latency. Recommend no more
than 2-3 enclosures in this design
If large SAN solutions are required, the design just discussed may not be the adequate. While the
stacking interfaces on the M-series I/O modules is higher than we could obtain using a link
aggregation group consisting of 1Gb ports, it is still somewhat limited. Also, if you foresee needing
more M1000e enclosures than the two to three enclosure maximum recommended, then a different
SAN design strategy should be considered.
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