Hi, this question is for someone who is really familiar with the fibre channel storage component of vSPhere networking.
BACKGROUND and CONTEXT
I have a Dell m1000e blade server chassis that is using a Dell Force10 IO Aggregator (IOA) as the server enclosure's I/O modules in the back. Its like a Cisco FEX...no STP, but it does support local switching....The IOA also supports FCoE transit, DCB, and FIP Snooping. As I said, it's like a FEX.
We are uplinking the IOAs to a Cisco Nexus 5548. We want to deploy the 5548 in NPV mode and connect it to a fibre channel switch that will be in full fabric mode.
Let's focus on the native FC ports that we will connect between the Nexus and the FC switch...ok?
OK...the FC ports on the 5548 will be considered NP ports, as the 5548 is in NPV mode. Those NP ports will log into the FC fabric first with a FLOGI in the usual manner, get assigned an FCID and so on....
The 5548 will then allow the N_Ports connected to it (meaning the server CNAs) to register their WWPNs, log into the fabric (as FDISCs) and get assigned an FCID, and so on...
QUESTION SPECIFICS
OK, here is the question...
We know that each FC link between the 5548 and the FC switch can support a theoretical maximum of 256 WWPNs. This is a T11 standard maximum, but I'm not sure if Cisco supports fewer (or more, for that matter). So, to calculate the number of FC links I will need between the 5548 and the FC switch, one of the things I must take into consideration is the number of WWPNs that the blade chassis will present to the 5548.
The blade chassis will consist of 16 ESXi hosts with a 20:1 consolidation ratio (20 VMs per host). That tells me that the 5548 should expect to perform fabric logins for each vWWPN for each VM. That means I should assume that there will be about 320 vWWNs from the guest OSs plus the 16 WWPNs from each physical CNA for which the 5548 must provide fabric logins.
Or should I???
Am I correct in counting the vWWNs that the 5548 must support OR is it the case that the CNA will hide or mask the vWWNs sitting behind them and therefore I only need to consider the physical WWNs from the CNAs when I calculate the number of FC links?
Sheeeew...sorry, I know that was long....hope I was clear...thank you!!