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NetBackup™ SAN Client and Fibre Transport Guide

Last Published: 2025-11-24

Product(s): NetBackup (11.1)

About zoning the SAN for Fibre Transport for a 16-gigabit target mode HBA support

Before you can configure and use the NetBackup Fibre Transport (FT) mechanism, the SAN must be configured and operational.

See About supported SAN configurations for SAN Client.

For SAN switched configurations, proper zoning prevents Fibre Transport traffic from using the bandwidth that may be required for other SAN activity. Proper zoning also limits the devices that the host bus adapter (HBA) ports discover; the ports should detect the other ports in their zone only. Without zoning, each HBA port detects all HBA ports from all hosts on the SAN. The potentially large number of devices may exceed the number that the operating system supports.

Instructions for how to configure and manage a SAN are beyond the scope of the NetBackup documentation. However, the following recommendations may help you optimize your SAN traffic.

Table: Best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances describes the best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances and NBU FTMS with 16Gb and 32Gb HBA.

Table: Best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances

Guideline	Description
One initiator per zone, multiple targets acceptable.	Cohesity recommends that you create zones with only a single initiator per zone. Multiple targets in a single zone are acceptable, only if all of the targets are similar. Tape target resources should be in separate zones from disk target resources, regardless of initiator. However, both sets of resources may share the same initiator.
Be aware of performance degradation when a port is configured for multiple zones.	If you use a single port as an initiator or a target for multiple zones, this port can become a bottleneck for the overall performance of the system. You must analyze the aggregate required throughput of any part of the system and optimize the traffic flow as necessary.
For fault tolerance, spread connectivity across HBA cards and not ports.	To ensure the availability of system connections, if you incorporate a multi-path approach to common resources, pair ports on separate cards for like zoning. This configuration helps you avoid the loss of all paths to a resource in the event of a card failure.
Zone the SAN based on WWN to facilitate zone migrations, if devices change ports.	It is recommended that you perform SAN zoning based on WWN. If switch port configurations or cabling architectures need to change, the zoning does not have to be recreated.

Note:

To enable the SAN client 16-GB target mode driver support for HBA ports, you must create zones with only one initiator and keep only one target mode per zone.

Table: Fibre Channel zones describes the zones you should use for your SAN traffic.

Note:

You must use physical port ID or World Wide Port Name (WWPN) when you specify the HBA ports on NetBackup Fibre Transport media servers.

See How to identify the HBA ports.

Table: Fibre Channel zones

Zone	Description
A Fibre Transport zone	A Fibre Transport zone (or backup zone) should include only specific HBA ports of the hosts that use Fibre Transport, as follows: Ports on the FT media server HBAs that connect to the SAN clients. These ports use the Cohesity target mode driver. See About the target mode driver. Ports on the SAN client HBAs that connect to the media server ports that are in target mode. The ports on the SAN clients use the standard initiator mode driver. You must define the FT media server target ports by physical port ID or World Wide Port Name (WWPN). The target mode driver WWPNs are not unique because they are derived from the Fibre Channel HBA WWPN. The NetBackup SAN clients should detect only the HBA ports that are in target mode on the NetBackup media servers. They should not detect HBA ports in initiator mode on the NetBackup media servers. They should not detect the FC HBAs on other hosts. To promote multistream throughput, each SAN client should detect all target mode devices of the media server HBA ports in the zone.
External storage zone	If the storage is on a SAN, create an external storage zone. The zone should include the HBA ports for the storage and the FT media server HBA ports that connect to the storage. All of the ports in the storage zone use the standard initiator mode HBA driver.

Zone

Description

A Fibre Transport zone

A Fibre Transport zone (or backup zone) should include only specific HBA ports of the hosts that use Fibre Transport, as follows:

Ports on the FT media server HBAs that connect to the SAN clients. These ports use the Cohesity target mode driver.
See About the target mode driver.
Ports on the SAN client HBAs that connect to the media server ports that are in target mode. The ports on the SAN clients use the standard initiator mode driver.
You must define the FT media server target ports by physical port ID or World Wide Port Name (WWPN). The target mode driver WWPNs are not unique because they are derived from the Fibre Channel HBA WWPN.
The NetBackup SAN clients should detect only the HBA ports that are in target mode on the NetBackup media servers. They should not detect HBA ports in initiator mode on the NetBackup media servers. They should not detect the FC HBAs on other hosts.
To promote multistream throughput, each SAN client should detect all target mode devices of the media server HBA ports in the zone.

External storage zone

If the storage is on a SAN, create an external storage zone. The zone should include the HBA ports for the storage and the FT media server HBA ports that connect to the storage. All of the ports in the storage zone use the standard initiator mode HBA driver.