Home > Workload Solutions > SAP > Guides > SAP HANA TDI Guides > Dell Validated Design for SAP HANA TDI with Dell PowerVault ME5 Storage > Network configuration
This section describes what to consider when you connect SAP HANA to PowerVault ME5 systems over an FC SAN network.
Configure dual redundant fabrics to the PowerVault ME5 array and each external host having connectivity on each of the fabrics as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 6. Minimize the number of hops between the host and the PowerVault ME5 system. For performance, load balancing, and redundancy, each host must have at least two paths to a PowerVault ME5 (four ports to a ME5 array). Dell Technologies recommends that a host has no more than eight paths per volume.
The FC SAN network must support 16 Gb/s or 32 Gb/s speed on all components—HBAs, SAN ports, and PowerVault ME5 FC ports. When SAN switches are connected using Inter-Switch Links (ISLs), the aggregated bandwidth of the ISLs must be able to support the aggregated total bandwidth of all the SAP HANA nodes that are using these ISLs. An SAP HANA node requires a maximum bandwidth of 400 MB/s.
PowerVault ME5 arrays support direct attachment of the SAP HANA hosts to the array through FC, provided the hosts connect to both the PowerVault ME5 controllers and have the required native Linux multipathing software (DM-MPIO). Although direct-attached FC connections are supported with PowerVault ME5 arrays, Dell Technologies recommends using switches in production environments to provide HA and redundancy and protect SAP HANA against any component failures.