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IBM Fusion Access for SAN overview - Virtualization with IBM Fusion Access for SAN | Virtualization | OKD 4
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{IBMFusionFirst} overview

About IBM Fusion Access for SAN

IBM Fusion Access for SAN is a solution that provides a scalable clustered file system for enterprise storage, primarily designed to offer access to consolidated, block-level data storage. It presents storage devices, such as disk arrays, to the operating system as if they were direct-attached storage.

This solution is particularly geared towards enterprise storage for Red Hat OKD Virtualization and leverages existing Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure. A SAN is a dedicated network of storage devices that is typically not accessible through the local area network (LAN).

Why use Fusion Access for SAN?

Easy user experience

Fusion Access for SAN features a wizard-driven user interface (UI) for installing and configuring storage clusters, file systems, and storage classes, to simplify the setup process.

Leverage existing infrastructure

Organizations can leverage their existing SAN investments, including Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI technologies, as they transition to or expand with OKD Virtualization.

Scalability

The storage cluster is designed to scale with OKD clusters and virtual machine (VM) workloads. It can support up to approximately 3000 VMs on 6 bare-metal hosts, with possibilities for further scaling by adding more file systems or using specific storage class parameters.

Consolidated and shared storage

SANs enable multiple servers to access a large, shared data storage capacity. This architecture facilitates automatic data backup and continuous monitoring of the storage and backup processes.

High-speed data transfer

By using a dedicated high-speed network for storage, Fusion Access for SAN overcomes the data transfer bottlenecks that can occur over a traditional LAN, especially for large volumes of data.

File-level access

Although a SAN primarily operates at the block level, file systems built on top of SAN storage can provide file-level access through shared-disk file systems.

Centralized management

The underlying SAN software manages servers, storage devices, and the network to ensure that data moves directly between storage devices with minimal server intervention. It also supports centralized management and configuration of SAN components like Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs).

Prerequisites and Limitations for Fusion Access for SAN

Prerequisites

Installing and configuring Fusion Access for SAN require the following prerequisites:

  • Bare-metal worker nodes with attached SAN storage.

  • A working container registry enabled.

  • All worker nodes must connect to the same LUNs.

    A shared LUN is a shared disk that is accessed by all worker nodes simultaneously.

  • A Kubernetes pull secret.

Limitations

  • Limitations for Fusion Access for SAN rely on the IBM Storage Scale container native limitations and can be found in the documentation for IBM Storage Scale container native.

  • Hosted control planes (HCP) clusters are not supported.