Gigabit Switches for Dell MD3000i ISCSI Traffic
- Thread starter alex1002
- Start date
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As the MD3000i is a fairly old SAN, I assume you bought it second hand. A decent switch for this SAN is Dell's PowerConnect 6224. You can find these on Ebay for less than US$300.
Do not stack them as it is better to use 2 subnets; one on each switch.
The defaults are:
Controller 0 iSCSI port 0: 192.168.130.101
Controller 0 iSCSI port 1: 192.168.131.101
Controller 1 iSCSI port 0: 192.168.130.102
Controller 1 iSCSI port 1: 192.168.131.102
Each server would have 1 NIC in each subnet (or vmkernel if it's VMware), and connect to the switch that is serving that specific subnet.
One note: the MD3000-series will only accept Dell certified enterprise class drives. These drives have Dell-ized firmware on them. You cannot take a retail (generic) drive and flash it with Dell firmware unless you have some manufacturer-level equipment to crossflash drives. You can pick the drives up from Ebay pretty easily, but you want to be sure that the Dell partnumber is listed on the MD3000's compatibility list (and not just the manufacturer's partnumber).
Do not stack them as it is better to use 2 subnets; one on each switch.
The defaults are:
Controller 0 iSCSI port 0: 192.168.130.101
Controller 0 iSCSI port 1: 192.168.131.101
Controller 1 iSCSI port 0: 192.168.130.102
Controller 1 iSCSI port 1: 192.168.131.102
Each server would have 1 NIC in each subnet (or vmkernel if it's VMware), and connect to the switch that is serving that specific subnet.
One note: the MD3000-series will only accept Dell certified enterprise class drives. These drives have Dell-ized firmware on them. You cannot take a retail (generic) drive and flash it with Dell firmware unless you have some manufacturer-level equipment to crossflash drives. You can pick the drives up from Ebay pretty easily, but you want to be sure that the Dell partnumber is listed on the MD3000's compatibility list (and not just the manufacturer's partnumber).
