Brocade and Qlogic (SANbox2) switches in one fabric

Below is a quick guide about how to merge Brocade and Qlogic (SANbox2) switches together. I understand, that a more intellegent approach would be to stay away from mixing different vendors in a SAN environment but at times we live with what we’ve been given. As always in our life, there is a trade-off one will have to pay: since in the latest Brocade firmware (6.x) the interoperability mode 1 has been depricated thus you won’t be able to plug a new Brocade switch into a fabric built on Qlogic hardware. Another, and a more serious, issue is that with 6.x I was unable to propogate zone changes from Brocade in native mode to Qlogic switch which was set to interopmode 1. The only way to do that was to swipe out zone’s configuration completely from the Qlogic switch and recreate an ISL. If this a show-stopper then refrain from upgrading your Borcade switch and stay with 5.x firmware version.

Our initial state looked like this (port 3 was plugged to Qlogic):

swd77:admin> switchshow
switchName:     swd77
switchType:     34.0
switchState:    Online   
switchMode:     Interop
switchRole:     Principal
switchDomain:   97 (unconfirmed)
switchId:       fffc61
switchWwn:      10:00:00:05:1e:02:a1:3c
zoning:         OFF
switchBeacon:   OFF

Area Port Media Speed State            Proto
=======================================================================
  0   0   id    N2   Online           F-Port  50:05:08:b3:00:92:59:91
  1   1   id    N4   No_Light         
  2   2   id    N2   Online           F-Port  50:06:0b:00:00:38:fd:42
  3   3   id    N2   In_Sync          
  4   4   id    N2   Online           F-Port  50:05:08:b3:00:92:59:99
  5   5   id    N4   No_Light         
  6   6   id    N2   Online           F-Port  50:06:0b:00:00:38:fb:a2
  7   7   id    N4   No_Light         
  8   8   --    N4   No_Module        
  9   9   --    N4   No_Module        
 10  10   --    N4   No_Module        
 11  11   --    N4   No_Module        
 12  12   --    N4   No_Module        
 13  13   --    N4   No_Module        
 14  14   --    N4   No_Module        
 15  15   --    N4   No_Module     

swd77:admin> islshow
No ISL found
 
swd77:admin> cfgshow
Defined configuration:
 cfg:   default all_wwns
 zone:  all_wwns
                50:05:08:b3:00:92:59:91; 50:06:0b:00:00:38:fd:42; 
                50:05:08:b3:00:92:59:99; 50:06:0b:00:00:38:fb:a2

Effective configuration:
 no configuration in effect

swd77:admin> portcfgshow 3
Area Number:              3
Speed Level:              AUTO
Trunk Port                ON
Long Distance             OFF
VC Link Init              OFF
Locked L_Port             OFF
Locked G_Port             OFF
Disabled E_Port           OFF
ISL R_RDY Mode            OFF
RSCN Suppressed           OFF
Persistent Disable        OFF
NPIV capability           ON


The switches were connected through ports 3 and 0 on the Borcade’s and Qlogic’s sides repsectively and as you’ve already noticed port 3 was in sate “In_Sync”, which is a synonymous for “Bad”. The only way to recover from this state was a manual intervention and forcebly configuring port 3 as a G_Port.

swd77:admin> portcfggport 3,1

Only after doing that, an active ISL link was brought on-line:

swd77:admin> islshow
  1:  3->  0 10:00:00:c0:dd:02:cb:fa  98                 sp:  2.000G bw:  2.000G 

swd77:admin> fabricshow
Switch ID   Worldwide Name           Enet IP Addr    FC IP Addr      Name
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 97: fffc61 10:00:00:05:1e:02:a1:3c 10.3.241.225    0.0.0.0        >"swd77"
 98: fffc62 10:00:00:c0:dd:02:cb:fa 10.3.241.226    0.0.0.0         "SANbox2-8"

So manually configuring port 3 on my brocade switch as a G_Port was the main trick that actually made everything spinning. Keep that in mind and have fun!

Posted on March 29, 2011 at 12:06 pm by sergeyt · Permalink
In: SAN

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