Checklist or procedure for implementing / upgrading SAN ?

you can use Clariion Procedure Generator but not the customer version. I have used it for proper guide and documentation.

Dear Abdullah,

Many thanks for your advice. It is a great tools.

Our situation is a little bit complicated as we would like to upgrade the existing CX300 SAN to a CX3-20 one. We will get new HBAs / Brocade switches and CX3-20 SAN Array.

We are struggling on the procedure we have to set up the HBA / Zoning with new Switch and data migration to CX3-20.

We would like to know the following steps are sensible ?
1) Replace all HBA with 4Gbps - Servers have to be stopped for a while
2) Zoning to the existing FC Switch for all hosts
3) Zoning to the new Brocade Switch for all hosts and CX300 during weekend
4) Migrate data from CX300 to CX3-20 (How ?) - 1st weekend - Can be the same as 3)
5) Change the connection of new Brocade Switch from CX300 to CX3-20 on the second weekend
6) Perform a differential copy of data from CX300 to CX3-20 on the second weekend
7) Switch over to the new system on the coming Monday

Thanks

SAN Copy?

Jc

Dear Aran,

Many thanks for your advice.

We would like to know why there is downtime if SANCopy is used (We haven't used them before) ?

Thanks

SANCopy just copies a LUN from one array to another array... so you don't want to be writing to the source while it is being copied.

Jc

I ask this question is because the sales person says that the engineer will make use of SANCopy for data migration but it can be done during business hour.

Moreover, is it possible to make differential backup if data migration has to take more than 1 weekend ? (Like: First weekend only copies 2/3 data across and has to copy the remaining one + differential on the second weekend) ?

Thanks

Dear Aran,

I would like to know is it necessary to stop the server before replacing the HBA ? Are they hot swappable ?

Thanks

what kind of servers do you have ? Most of the time you will need to shut the system down to replace HBAs. You can use SanCopy to make your initial copy, and after that run incremental sync just to keep the target copy as close as possible to source.

Right, it depends on the platform, but most likely you don't have hot-swappable HBAs. The CLARiiON Procedure Generator will have procedures for replacing HBAs in a host, I recommend you download it and review the process.

You could run SANCopy during the day if there was not a lot of read contention for the LUNs you are migrating. I would talk with your EMC Technical Consultant about concerns in this area.

There are 3 Windows 2003 Server and 3 ESX 3.0.1 Hosts directly connected to the SAN via FC Switch.

If it is feasible to have incremental sync after the first SANCopy, we can plan to perform data migration in 2 weekends. In this way, we can copy data on the first weekend and copy the difference in second weekend / configure the hosts to use the new Storage Array.

i am not sure if i missed a step while reading your checklist. For SanCopy to be able to migrate data from CX300 to CX3, you will need to have both arrays connected to the same switch fabric. Does it mean that you will ISL your new brocade switch to your existing switch?

Dear Aran,

The reason I ask for the replacement of HBA is because we have to consider
1) In the service quote, they only say to perform the task in business hour
2) We don't want (at least we have to arrange the system down time with end users) for the existing service.

Most likely, we will ask the service provider to give us a quote for those stuff to be done after hour or all stuff (replacement of HBA, connecting to new Switch, 1st data migration) on a weekend.

Thanks

Dear Dynamox,

I am not aware of this requirement as I have no experience with SANCopy at all.

The existing one is a Brocade SW3850 and the new one will be either a Brocade SW200e or SW5000 FC Switch. I have checked that all 16 ports of SW200e can be used for ISL. I do believe that SW3850 does support ISL.

I would like to ask for ISL, do we use specific optical fabirc or the ordinary multi-mode cable ?

Thanks

regular multi-mode cables will work. CX300 will need to be able to talk to CX3 via FC, i have always connected one CX to another via switch zoning, i am not sure if you can simply connect unused ports on one CX and plug into unused port on CX3 and perform SanCopy like that.