FC Device Configuration Overview

This section provides a high level overview of the tasks for configuring Solaris I/O multipathing features for FC devices.

The following table lists the configuration tasks, a description of each task, and the reference information where you can find related procedures.

Table 1-1 Tasks for Configuring Multipathed FC Devices

Configuration Task	Task Description	Reference Information
Enable multipathing features	Multipathing is enabled as follows: By default, for FC devices on x86/x64 platforms By manual configuration on SPARC platforms By manual configuration for SAS devices	Chapter 2, Configuring Solaris I/O Multipathing Features.
Configure FC devices	In the Oracle Solaris OS, FCAL, fabric, and point-to-point connected devices are made available to the host.	Chapter 3, Configuring Fabric-Connected Devices
Set up FC boot device	Solaris I/O multipathing features enable a Solaris server to boot from a fabric device.	FC Device Considerations
Configure IPFC SAN devices	You can configure host recognition of IPFC devices and implementation of IP over FC in a SAN. Configuration of IPFC depends on the instance of the Fabric Port (FP) driver for the FC adapter ports.	Chapter 6, Configuring IPFC SAN Devices
Configure SAS devices	In the Oracle Solaris OS, multipathing of SAS devices is supported.	Chapter 5, Configuring SAS Domains

Configuring FC Devices With Multipathing Considerations

Before you configure Solaris I/O multipathing features, consider the following:

Configure ports and zones according to the vendor-specific documentation for storage and switches.
LUN masking enables specific LUNs to be seen by specific hosts. See your vendor-specific storage documentation that describes masking.
Power management needs to be disabled for hosts and devices on a SAN. For more information about power management, see power.conf(4).
The STMS boot utility is included with Solaris I/O multipathing features that manage the SAN booting process. Issuing the stmsboot command automatically updates the /etc/vfstab file and the dump configuration to reflect device name changes when enabling or disabling the multipathing software. Note that the software is disabled by default for devices on SPARC based systems and enabled by default for devices on x86 based systems.
Fabric-connected devices are configured and made available to the host automatically during installation and boot time.

Note - If you are performing an upgrade and want to make any FC devices unavailable after upgrade, you have to be manually unconfigure those devices by using cfgadm -c unconfigure commands. However, to make those devices permanently unavailable to the system, you might want to consider using switch zoning or LUN masking. The changes made by cfgadm -c unconfigure do not persist after a reboot unless manual configuration for FC devices has been enabled. To find out how to disable the FC devices discovery during boot or install, refer to Appendix A, Manual Configuration for Fabric-Connected Devices.

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	Oracle Solaris SAN Configuration and Multipathing Guide Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Information Library