Connecting 2 sans

so the 2 4500 are your tape fabric ?

The 4500 is zoned to the cx500, ML-6030 (8) LTO4 Drvs, 2 Commvault Media agents and the Commserv for backups. The 5300's are zoned for the AX4-120, blade enclosures and all other servers. This is at our main data ctr.

so the goal is to do LAN-free backups or you need to use one of the arrays as "disk cache" before backups get spooled to tape ?  Just trying to understand what your goal is.

Sorry for not being able to explain myself in a comprehensible way , yes lan free backups. The CX4-120 is full and I am not able to use it for backups.

so media agent is connected to CX4 and Brocade 5300. You can either ISL both switches together or add another HBA to the media agent server and connect to 4500.

The media agents are zoned to cx500 and lib dedicated to backups only they are the data pushers, I would like to isl the switches together but dell told me not to because it would take ownership of the 5300 that are on cx4 with all other servers exchange sp fs etc and will cause problems.

are you talking about McData 4500 ?

The old switches are Mcdata 4500 aka DS24-m2 2Gig zoned for CX-500, ML-6030 and 4 Servers for backups. The Newer switches are Brocade's 5300 80 port 4 Gig zoned for CX4-120,that is fully populated zoned for application servers,sql,exchange,sp,archive,Vmware everything but backups. Everything is going over the network for backups except auxcoping to tape. I was hoping someone could direct me on how to minimize network traffic and keep as much on fabric as possible. The old set of switches are not fibre linked to the new switches.

Is it even possible to do LAN free backups with normal physical clients ? The only way to do SAN based backups is AFAIK something using VMFS based backups, using snapshot technology, so CommVault needs to integrate with Virtual Center. I don't think it's a SAN issue, it's the way you make your backups. With regular iDA's you will always have LAN based backups.

I don't really know anything about CommVault (we use Networker), but I'm not sure I understand your question RRR about using LAN free backups for physical clients. At least with Networker it's actually easier to get physical clients backing p over the SAN then it is with VMs. Mind you there are licensing costs (dedicated or non-dedicated storage node licenses) but there is no issue with getting the traffic off the LAN.

One example is exchange about 5 TB and lives on our CX4. If you install a Commvault media agent on the 2 node cluster (exchange) and zone it for the san and tape library CV used snapshot technology to replicate and backup to another san then to library Lan free. The os is a different story, just looking at what is on san (1) source and move it to another san(2) then when retention is met off to tape it goes. We do not have enough space on san(1) for backups,  the weekend Full’s are about 26+ TB. So I am trying to utilize our old cx500 san(2) until we can upgrade our cx4 san(1). We do not have EMC’s san copy or snapshot. I was told by dell not to connect the Brocades 5300(san1) to the McData DS24-M2 (san2) because you would lose functionality and also cause problems. I may be way off on this, and need to get our Commvault sales engineer involved.

dynamox

Can I get some guidance on how to easly do this without screwing up the production switches and san cx4. I have only done basic zoning to san and library and servers using f port.

I do have a extra set of switched to try and configure it on the backup set of switches cx500.

McData 4500 and Brocade 5300 can be connected together, just need to make sure proper code and interop mode is set on each switch.

Tks

can you get the firmware versions and current interop mode from each switch ?

Here is one of the old switches, both have same firmware.