Physical Connectivity from Fabric Interconnect to MDS and Failover please suggest

Question

Dear Team
We have 2 FI and 2 MDS 1 SAN
Currenlty the connectivity is
2 direct physical connections from FI-A to MDS1
2 direct physical Connections from FI-B to MDS2
From MDS 1 connection to SAN Primary controller
From MDS 1 connection to SAN Secondary controller
From MDS 2 connection to SAN primary controller
From MDS 2 connection to SAN Secondary controller
Hope the above connectivty is fine?
we had looked at
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps4159/ps6409/ps5990/white_paper_c11_586100.html (as team always preferred to go via cisco standards)
In FI we have to cluster the FI and Primary and Subordinate,likewise here for MDS to we need to? or will it be done via FIs ?
If not these 2 MDs they work independent but sharing the configs that happens among them?
Now what ever changes (Zone Creation)we make on MDS1 hope that will get relpicated to MDS2 via FIs?
If MDS1 Fails will all the configuration be available on MDS2 and still the infra will be smooth running ? and vice versa?
Any additional steps to be done to achieve it?
Which is the best way to achieve it please suggest
Thanks and Regards
Jose

Answer 1

Hi Jose.
Physically your connectivity is good.
On the UCS side, the 'Primary' and 'Subordinate' role refer only to the Management of the system and which device is actually running UCS Manager.
Each MDS device will have separate configuration (zoning).  It's different between the 2 devices.
The blade itself will have a connection out each side, or 'SAN Fabric'.
e.g.
           +----+
       +---+    +-----+
       |   |    |     |
       |   |    |     |
       |   |SAN |     |
       | +->----<--+  |
       | |         |  |
       | |         |  |
   +---+-+-+    +--+--+--+
   |       |    |        |
   |MDS-A  |    |MDS-B   |
   +--^-^--+    +---^-^--+
      | |           | |
   +--+-+--+    +---+-+--+
   |       |    |        |
   |UCS-A  |    | UCS-B  |
   +--+----+    +-----+--+
      |               |
      |               |
VSAN100    +-----+    | VSAN200
      |    |     |    |
      +---->     <----+
           |Blade|
           +-----+
The blade will have a HBA on FabricA (VSAN100) and FabricB (VSAN200)
Each HBA will have a different WWPN, and on the SAN array, each controller will have a WWPN
So on MDS-A, the zoning will be:
Blade WWPN A
Storage WWPN Primary A
Storage WWPN Secondary A
MDS-B, the zoning will be:
Blade WWPN B
Storage WWPN Primary B
Storage WWPN Secondary B
So the configuration is *not* synced between the two MDS devices, but they each have visibility to the blades vHBA device.  At the blade level, the Multipathing software on the Operating System will handle any failover.
On the UCS, we would generally use a Port Channel up to the MDS.