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HP-UX hosts on Cisco SAN need to move to Brocade SAN. Non disruptive?
Hi experts,
I have several HP-UX hosts connected to Clariion using a Cisco based SAN. I'm aware that for certain OSs the FCID is critical and I know HP-UX is one of them (I think Solaris was the other one). I can look up the FCIDs the HBAs of each HP-UX have and my plan was to set FCIDs to each HP-UX HBA on the Brocade SAN, but I'm not sure this is possible (in Cisco you can). How can I make this transition as painless as possible?
One option is to set the domain id the same as the previous Cisco switch, look up the FCID the wwpn currently has and dedicate the switch port containing that particular FCID to the HBA that's going to be moved. What do you think of this solution? (or can you manually set FCIDs on Brocade?)
felipon1
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October 30th, 2012 07:00
Hi,
Theoretically, you cannot manually set a FCID on a Brocade Port. Brocade defines the FCID depending on the port whilst Cisco does not. This fact makes very difficult to set the same FCID on a Cisco and a Brocade switch. You can set the same Domain ID both switchs, and if by any chance the FCID assigned to the HPUX hba has also been assigned to a Brocade Port, you can connect it there, FCID won't chance, not affecting the HW path (or you can also connect it to the port you want and use command portswap to exchange that port FCID with the one you need); but I am afraid that a small percent of times this will happen.
Rgds
dynamox
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October 29th, 2012 07:00
Cisco and Brocade are not connected together ?
RRR
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October 30th, 2012 00:00
No, we don't want to risk anything with this customer and decided to not use interop mode connections. Besides: you still need to unplug and reconnect each HBA anyway, so why not from the old fabric to a brand new one?
But the question is if it's possible to manually set FCIDs on Brocade. If we can manage to keep that the same as on the old fabric, disruption might not be very painful.
RRR
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October 31st, 2012 06:00
thanks for the help
RRR
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February 28th, 2013 05:00
we managed to keep the FCIDs on the new Brocade SAN the same as on the old Cisco SAN and guess what? None of the HP-UXs noticed any change (except for loosing paths for a short period of time when reconnecting cables from Cisco to Brocade).
bhalilov1
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February 28th, 2013 05:00
Moving the hosts will not change devices in HPUX if the FCID of the storage port stays the same.
HPUX version 11v3 has completely changed storage stack with agile view (persistent binding):
http://bizsupport2.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01915618/c01915618.pdf#page5
Anonymous
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April 30th, 2014 03:00
Hi RRR,
How did u manage to complete the migration without disruption? You mentioned that u kept the FCID same on the brocade. Could you tell me the steps to keep the same FCID? I would appreciate if you could assist.
Anonymous
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May 1st, 2014 03:00
Thanks alot. I got it now. However i have load more to tackle as i have 3 switch ISL`d which i need to consolidate into 1 DCX. So using this method i can only migrate 1 switch ports to the DCX as i cant have multiple DID in DCX.
RRR
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May 1st, 2014 03:00
there was a short disruption of course as we had to physically move the patch cord from the old to the new switch. We looked up the FCID on the Cisco for this HP-UX HBA, looked on what port that would be on the new Brocade switch and simply plugged it in there. For that FCID to appear, you need to have the same domain id in the old and the new switch though, otherwise the old FCIDs won't reappear at all! And another thing to consider is that if your old Cisco switch has 32 ports and you're moving to a 16 port Brocade, only 16 FCIDs will reappear and everything above 17 is useless, since the Brocade doesn't have these ports (in my example).
For Cisco the first HBA to log on to a switch will get the first available FCID. In Brocade FCIDs are bound by their ports.
RRR
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May 1st, 2014 04:00
correct. In your case it will be more disruptive then as the HP-UX manager will need to rediscover the LUNs since they'll be using new FCID numbers. Make sure to consult with him about this and that your backup is in place.
dynamox
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May 1st, 2014 05:00
on older HPUX that are not using agile devices (or whatever HP calls them these days), cXtXdX will change, so your system admin will need to be prepared to export before the migration and then re-import after the new devices have been discovered. I believe there is an option in vgimport to allow to scan the headers of the disk so it will automatically find the disks that belong to specific volume group. I am sure your sysadmin is well aware of that functionality.
RRR
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May 1st, 2014 05:00
and that's exactly why I mentioned consulting your friendly HP-UX admin.
dynamox
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May 1st, 2014 06:00
are you sure he/she is friendly ?
RRR
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May 1st, 2014 06:00
when you ask nicely or bring stroopwafels they're always friendly. Besides, when they're not, they won't get their storage
dynamox
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May 1st, 2014 06:00
very nice, bribery with food or alcohol works magic