Extended fabric license

[inex]

Hi
We have Brocade san switches on two diffeent locations (about 10km between them). We use single mode sfp's, but we see some problems with luns go offline for short periods during heavy CA traffic. Is there a command in Brocade cli which shows that there is need for extended fabric license?

-inex

[Bulent ILIMAN · Accepted solution]

hi inex,

Brocade licenses are 1 or 0 mean if you don't have a license you need, then it will not work or be able to reach other end. in your situation you have access to other end, so your issue does not seem to be a license but a performance issue,

btw, you can see your licenses installed with;
>show license

you can capture a support_show output and share, may be we can find something

[inex]

I was more thinking if it's possible to find out if it's necessary to use extended fabrics. Is there any isl port details which will tell me that?

-inex

[Jan Soska]

Hello Inex,

1) make sure you use LongWawe SFP's for your Inter-Switch Links (ISLs).
2) generaly extended fabric is used in higher distances (>30km), but I heard it could help in shorter enviroment.

Check your ISL first, licence could by expensive.

Jan

[inex]

The distance is ok, I think the problem is more that we need extra buffer credits.

-inex

[Jan Soska]

hello,

it could be true, maybe try to investigate switch logs with vendor support to make it sure, licence could by expencive... :(

Jan

[Bulent ILIMAN]

Hi again inex.

What storage are you using on CA, EVA?

If so, what is your XCS,

can you share supportshow output for the san switches,

If the data change rate on local storage is greater than bandwith capacity it may be normal to see some LUN errors.

[Thomas Martin]

Hi inex,

please check your Port config. Connect via telnet to the switch and type portbuffershow. Notify the values for your E-port. Type portperfshow. You can see now your current speed for all ports. "crtl C" stops this output. Connect to switch via browser. Go to portadmin, select your E-port, edit configuration, a window opens where you select your port types, click next then you can select your speed below the speed dropdown menu should be another dropdown menu for long distance. The default value is zero, select the other value which is for 10km. Save these changes. Repeat same steps on the other connected FC-Switch. Connect via telnet to the switch and type portbuffershow. Your E-port should now show under LX-Mode an entry of LE and at the Link Distance 10km. These settings helps me to grow up my performance from 23MB/s to 76MB/s without extend fabric license. Try these settings for one fabric and watch the throughput and your lun problems.

Thomas

[kris rombauts]

Just to add to Thomas excelent post, before you see the extra drop down box for the distance, you have to select "Show Advanced Mode" in the WebTools GUI port administration window.

While in basic mode you don't get the option to choose for the long distance mode.


HTH

Kris