Adam,
This will work fine, I can confirm this is supported for the FC shelves, at a minimum. Not sure about ATA. You are correct in that it is generally a cost issue, especially when loops start to grow large ;).
We have some here in the lab set up this way, and many of our customers have this setup. The only headache is that long FC cables need to be coiled, and it tends to take up more space / make things a bit more cluttered in the cabinet.
Generally, I would recommend moving back to the copper intershelf cables when you can. Easier to manage, overall.
And if not, should you ever have a loop problem (crazy!), please let your NetApp support engineer know about the config ;)
-- Mike Lambert NetApp Technical Support Engineer I work Sun - Wed, 1300 US ET - 2359 US ET.
-----Original Message----- From: Adam McDougall [mailto:mcdouga9@egr.msu.edu] Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 2:48 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Fibre vs. copper cabling for FAS3040
We recently received a cluster of FAS3040, and due to some ordering confusion, ended up with no copper shelf interconnects but an excess of fibre cables + SFP modules. We have 4 DS14MK2 FC shelves and one DS14MK2 AT shelf to attach. I will probably obtain the copper shelf interconnects that I am supposed to have, but in the meantime, would it work good enough for testing using all optical fibre cables and no copper? Is this a supported configuration? Would it be unrecommended and how strongly?
I'd have to assume it is a more costly situation than using copper interconnects. I just haven't had time to contact the right people to get this situated yet.