Xsan 2 or later: How to configure MultiSAN

Hardware configuration

• Fibre channel switch: All MDCs, Xsan clients and storage devices should be configured to communicate in the same hard zone or orphan zone or should not reside in zone.
• Ethernet switches: Both the Ethernet switch used to communicate Xsan metadata information and the switch used to communicate network services should be configured such that all Metadata Controllers and Xsan clients are in the same unzoned subnet. 

Software configuration

MultiSAN is configured within a single Xsan Admin SAN configuration window, as opposed to administering multiple SANs which is performed using more than one Xsan Admin window.
 

How to configure MultiSAN in Xsan 2 or later 

While Creating an Xsan volume:

MultiSAN can be configured while selecting the metadata controllers for the volume you are creating. During the volume creation in SAN Setup, a pane is presented in which one defines Volume Failover Priority. To configure MultiSAN, configure the Volume Failover priority in such a way that each volume is hosted by certain Metadata controllers:

Example 1:

While creating the first Xsan volume, configure it to use a set of Metadata Controllers:

While creating a second Xsan volume, configure it to use a different set of Metadata Controllers such as displayed here:

Example 2:

A Metadata controller can control two Xsan volumes as displayed in this example. One volume may be hosted by the following set of Metadata Controllers:

While the second volume may use this set of Metadata Controllers:

If Xsan volumes have already been created:

Configure MultiSAN by accessing the Failover Priority setting for each volume in Xsan Admin’s volume pane. On that sheet, click the gear button and select "Edit Failover Priority".