Changing Brocade DS200B with DS-5100B switch

Hello,

I come back to this issue because the switch migration was postponed,

please how to ISL switches ?

What do you think about uploading switch configuration, stopping everything

and disconnecting the old switch, then downloading the configuration into

the new switch, connecting then starting everything again ?

The servers are running Solaris with MPIO as multipathing, any precaution

to take ?

Thanks

Regards

Sorry for the delay Consty, I was going to try to get back to this at the end of last week, but work got in the way :-)

So, I'm still going to strongly recommend you go the route of ISLing the new switches to the old ones first. ISLing is actually very simple. Assuming that the configuration of the switch ports has not been changed to prevent "E" type connections, you can ISL two switches together by simply connecting a port on each with a patch cable. If the ISL is successful, the two "fabrics" (in this case each fabric starts out as an individual switch) will merge to become a single fabric. The Zoning databases will merge and the switches will synchronize. You can tell for sure that this has happened by looking in the interface to see the port type. A port with storage or a host logged in will be an F port. If the ISL has established you will see the port configured as an E port.

A few things to consider to make sure that you can ISL successfully:

• The ports on both switches must be configured to allow E type connections. This should be the default
• The zoning database from each switch will merge, so you should ensure there are no zones that will conflict. In your case one switch likely won't have any zones defined at first anyway, sp it shouldn't be an issue
• You can't ISL two switches together if the Domain IDs are the same. Make sure the Domain ID on the new switches are different from the existing switches.
• You will want to confirm that the "Compatibility" mode on both switches are consistent. This can be found on the Compatibility tab under Configuration when you enable Advanced Mode in the Switch Administration dialog (this is for the Web interface which I'm most familiar with). You are probably going to want both set to Brocade Native

Once you have ISLed, and completed your move to the new switches, if you want to remove the 200s it is simply a matter of disconnecting them from the 5100s. The ISL will be broken automatically and you don't have to do anything special to prepare for it.

The other thing you will want to consider as you move connections over is that a single ISL can cause problems in the long run. If it fails your fabric will segment and (obviously) anything that needs to talk across the ISL will fail. Once you get the initial ISL established you may want to add a second one for safety sake. You may also add additional ISLs if you have lots of traffic crossing the ISLs at some point and don't want to artificially "throttle" it.

Thanks Allen,

Ok for ISLing, do I need a license for that ?

Regards

Consty