Cabling of Fabric MetroCluster
The cabling of a MetroCluster is the key. Outside of some licensing it’s the cabling that’s really the only different between MetroCluster and Mirrored HA pair. Yes it’s a bit more complex for failover and failback but really the main difference from a setup point of view is the cabling. There’s a large number of cables and the configuration should be all mapped out before beginning putting equipment into your racks. I would heartily recommend reading MetroCluster and High Availability Guide before starting to understand your cabling requirements. Below is not a how-to on how to connect everything, it’s just an overview with a brief explanation. The above NetApp document is very detailed and should answer any questions you may have.
A simplified view of a Fabric MetroCluster is as follows:
I found this workflow from NetApp documentation which is quite useful as a guideline on how the bridges should be cabled.
