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Brocade Switch Configuration
Hi,
I'm trying to establish communication between a pair of Brocade 5300 switches located at a Primary site and Brocade 5100 switches which are located at the DR site. There is a direct dark fibre link laid down to the secondary site where there are Brocade 5100 switches located. Both these switches connnect to CX4 Emc Arrays at either site. The purpose of this is to establish a link to enable Mirrorview-Asynchronous.
Primary Secondary
Brocade 5300 (--------direct fibre link---------) Brocade 5100
I have the read through the documentations from Brocade and IBM and have gained from this that long distance SFP's would be needed to directly connect to the ports on the switch and an extended fabric license would be all that is needed to bridge this communication.
What I would need assistance to know over here is:
A) What would be the needed commands to have this configured, as I plan two use two ports on either switch and are there any precautions or needed care to be taken to ensure no issues of signal loss or reduced buffer credits.
I would be planning on following these steps,
1.Connecting two ELWL sfps's on either switch on both sites using the dark wave fibre and checking the islshow.
2. Installing the extended fabric license and setting the command
#portcfglongdistance 0 LD 1 55
B)Also would there be anymore changes needed on the zone front or for any other parameters on the switch like the domain id?
Kind Regards,
Vinod.
RRR
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February 26th, 2010 02:00
dynamox
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February 23rd, 2010 04:00
RRR,
Don't you need a license to setup a trunk on Brocade ?
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RRR
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February 23rd, 2010 04:00
Depending on the distance you do (not) need an "extended fabric" license for trunking. Under 10 kilometers you don't need the extra license.
To create a trunk put the ports in E mode (trunking) and connect them. In the GUI in "switch admin" in the "extended fabric" tab, you need to set the long distance setting to LD: Auto or LS: . You'd better use the distance setting which the switch proposes (or add about 10%).
If you exceed 300 meters and still would like to have a really fast connection, you'll need long wave SFP's. You could choose CWDM or DWDM to use the dark fiber better, since you might connect the 2 switches using 2 different wavelengths and LAN switches for example using 2 other wavelengths. This way you'll have 4 connections using only 1 dark fiber pair.
Zoning is exactly the same, since the switches on both sides of the dark fiber will merge to a single large fabric.
Aj0071
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February 23rd, 2010 05:00
What about the Extended fabric license would this be applicable here? Also what about this being considered with only switches no cwdm or dwdm as this is dark fibre between two sites with good connectivity.
RRR
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February 23rd, 2010 07:00
Indeed, (I'm confused with Cisco). On brocade you always need a license for truning. Just make sure you also buy the extended one if you exceed the 10km.
Aj0071
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May 15th, 2010 07:00
Is it necessary for me to do the trunking as I'm planning to merge one switch each from (Primary and DR) as on fabric.
Similarly the same is for the other switch. ( 2 switches on the Primary and 2 on the DR in total)
dynamox
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May 15th, 2010 08:00
it's not necessary but if you have redundant links going from site A to site B why not trunk them together and create one big pipe versus two smaller pipes. You add redundancy and performance that way. If one link in a trunk goes down, it will not affect availability (might decrease performance).
Aj0071
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May 15th, 2010 21:00
Thanks Dynamox, for the input regarding trunking.
Here since I am setting this up for the first time and this would involve replacing the old switches with new ones (DS 5300 and DS 5100's) at the Primary and DR site respectively would it be a good idea to replace the switches and then set up the ISL.
I was thinking of following these steps:
-Replacing the switches at Primary with Domain id's 1 and 2
-Replacing the switches at the Secondary with Domain id's 3 and 4.(Both would be done seperately)
-Zoning both the switches with the respective servers.
-Checking the lun acess in terms of servers and powerpath and connectivity.
Over here would doing the isl when connecting the DR switches directly help or can this be done later after all the above activity is completed?e
If you could let me know what would be the be the best option.
Also to add for the ISL, I am using extended LW sfp's and have extended fabric license. I would be connecting the fabric over the same port (example port 31 to 31) over dark fibre between the two sites and then run the
portcfglongdistance [slotnumber/]portnumber [distance_level]
[vc_translation_link_init] [desired_distance]
Should there be any further considerations taken in terms of zones/ running config or any other parameters, I'm just trying to get all things in place before doing this activity the next week?
dynamox
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May 16th, 2010 07:00
AJ,
take a look at Brocade Fabric OS guide (for whichever version you are using), there is a section on ISL/Trunking. You have to do some planning in terms of which ports will be used for ISL/Trunking and other best practices. If you can't find this document on PowerLink ..check out MyBrocade. You will see in the guide that some things are disruptive to existing fabrics (like enabling trunking license) so that may impact how you do things in your migration to the new switches.