Chapter 2 ā Architecture Overview Fibre Channel Connectivity
December 2019 User GuideāSpectra T200, T380, and T680 Libraries
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In the example shown in Figure 29 on page 67, the SCSI drives in the
partition are connected to the Fibre Channel arbitrated loop or fabric
through Port A of the F-QIP in each DBA. Port B of F-QIP 3 also provides
the path over which SCSI commands to control the robotics are sent from
the host.
As illustrated in Figure 30, an F-QIP provides any-to-any connectivity to
the SCSI drives it controls. Every drive (target) is potentially visible to
servers through both ports on the F-QIP. This permits flexibility in
configuring which servers can access which drives (target visibility).
For example, a QIP-based partition can be configured so that Drive 1 and
Drive 2 are only accessible through Port A and Drive 3 and Drive 4 are only
accessible through Port B. In this configuration, Drive 1 and Drive 2 can
only be accessed by the host connected to Port A; Drive 3 and Drive 4 can
only be accessed by a host connected to Port B. In a more complex
configuration, the F-QIP can be configured so that all drives are visible
through both ports. Such a configuration is typically used in a shared
storage environment or an environment with failover capabilities.
Figure 30 QIP-attached SCSI drive connectivity.
Drive 3
Drive 1 Drive 2
Internal cabling
Fiber port (Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet)
QIP
Drive Bay Assembly (DBA)
Drive 4
If drives are visible to multiple servers, your storage management software must
support this visibility. Otherwise server contention for a single drive can create
network and system problems.
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