switch data

Firstly, welcome to the EMC forums.

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What vendor switches do you own?  Brocade and/or Cisco.

For instance, even though with Brocade there is a principal switch each subordinate switch also has a copy of the fabric configuration.  An example command to identify the principal switch in a Brocade environment is:

fabricprincipal --show

You can use the same command to force a principal switch by setting the priority to 1 and reloading the config to perform a reelection.

On Cisco switches, it is based on the fcdomain priority as to who gets elected principal; however, let us assume all the switches have the same priority (best is of course to set it manually and generally speaking it should be the core switch as that of course implies a central beefy switch), it will choose the "lowest" WWN of the switch during election.  You can identify the principal switch as follows in a Cisco environment for the appropriate VSAN using:

sh fcdomain domain-list

Then maybe you might have Brocade and Cisco switches interconnected?  Then we need to start reviewing what strategy you used to interconnect them as it will influence which is principal and from which you need to do your fabric configurations modifications such as zoning.  For instance, choices may be configuring the Brocades as access gateways, enabling NPV on the Cisco switches, and/or setting appropriate interop mode.