300-610 practice question 30 of 35

An engineer must design the compute portion of a data center environment. The environment includes: * direct-attach Fibre Channel storage array with…

An engineer must design the compute portion of a data center environment. The environment includes: * direct-attach Fibre Channel storage array with four 32 G Fibre Channel ports per controller * Cisco UCS B-series servers equipped with Cisco UCS IOM 2408 Fabric Extenders * Cisco 6454 Fabric Interconnects The fabric interconnects conned to the LAN via 100G ports, the SAN via 32 G Fibre Channel ports, and the IOM 2408 via 10 G ports. Which storage connectivity strategy must the engineer choose?

Answer options

A: UCS' two-port PortChannel from each IOM10 each fabric interconnect. • Storage: Qty four Fibre Channel links from each SAN controller Id each fabric interconnect.

B: • UCS: four-poll Port Channel from each IOM to each fabric interconnect • Storage; tour-port SAN-PortChannel from each SAN controller to each fabric interconnect Correct answer

C: • UCS: Qty (our 802.1q trunks from each IOM to each fabric interconnect • Storage: Qfy two Fibre Channel links from each SAN controller to each fabric Interconnect

D: • UCS; four-port back-to-baok PortChannel between IOM and fabric interconnect • Storage; two-port SAN-PortChannel from each SAN controller to each fabric interconnect

Correct Answer:

B. • UCS: four-poll Port Channel from each IOM to each fabric interconnect • Storage; tour-port SAN-PortChannel from each SAN controller to each fabric interconnect

Explanation

This design question requires optimizing connectivity based on the hardware capabilities. The Cisco UCS IOM 2408 has four 10G uplinks to the Fabric Interconnect (FI); bundling all four into a PortChannel maximizes the server-to-FI bandwidth to 40 Gbps per IOM. The storage array controller has four 32G Fibre Channel ports; bundling these into a four-port SAN PortChannel to the FI maximizes storage throughput and provides link-level redundancy. This strategy fully utilizes the available physical ports on both the compute and storage components for the highest performance and resilience.

Why Incorrect

A. A two-port PortChannel for the UCS IOM would underutilize its four available 10G uplinks, creating a potential bottleneck for server traffic.
C. Configuring four individual 802.1q trunks instead of a PortChannel fails to aggregate bandwidth and provides less efficient load balancing and resiliency.
D. A two-port SAN-PortChannel for storage would underutilize the array's four available 32G FC ports, limiting the maximum storage performance.

References

1. Cisco. (2022). Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect Data Sheet. "The Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect... provides... 1/10/25-Gbps... and 16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel." Link.

2. Cisco. (2019). Cisco UCS 5108 Server Chassis Installation Guide. "The Cisco UCS 2408 Fabric Extender has four 25-Gigabit SFP28 ports that connect the blade server chassis to the fabric interconnect." (Note: While the guide mentions 25G, the 2408 model specifically uses 10G KR to blades and 25G uplinks. The question specifies 10G ports, which is a valid configuration. The principle of port-channeling all uplinks remains the same). Link, Section: Fabric Extenders.

3. Cisco. (2023). Cisco MDS 9000 Series SAN Port Channeling and Trunking Configuration Guide, Release 9.3(x). "A SAN port channel is a logical interface that contains a group of physical Fibre Channel ports... and increases the aggregate bandwidth." Link.

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