Do we need cards that offer persistent binding?

Do we need cards that offer persistent binding?

I am new to SANs, with less than a year experience, and have an issue you might be able to help me with. Our Unix boxes currently have a Sun-branded QLogic HBA card in them, and do not offer persistent binding. Every time a Sun box with this type of card in it is rebooted our SAN loses all of its drives to that box. We have argued with our Unix admin that we need cards that offer persistent binding but she strongly disagrees. Which of us is correct?

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Since you are using Sun-branded Qlogic adapters, I will guess that you are also using Solaris-based servers and have configured your sd.conf files. If you have not, check the Sun and Qlogic Web sites on how to do this, as well as verifying that you have the current drivers and updates.

Getting back to persistent binding, is there a specific reason you need to do specific binding, instead of storage-based LUN and volume mapping and masking? Talk with your Unix admin and determine what why she prefers to avoid persistent binding. Perhaps it is in order to use storage-based volume and LUN mapping, switch-based zoning, or a combination.

This was first published in February 2005