Interoperability issues between Nexus 5k and HP storageworks (8/20q)

[Mohaleen1]

Hi all,

I am trying to get a VM host to connect to its storage across a nexus and HP (Qlogic) fabric switch. This is currently having issues with the VM host unable to see the datastores, possibly due to interoperability between Cisco and HP (Qlogic)

I have configured and tested the connectivity using only the cisco nexus and this worked, I then tested it using only the HP fabric switch (HP 8/20q) and this also worked.

However, when using the HP and Cisco Nexus as shown in the attached diagram, things stop working.

The connection is using Native Fibre channel, On the Cisco side I performed the following steps

• Configured the Nexus with Domain ID 10 and the HP with Domain ID 20.
• Connected the 2 fabric switches on fc1/48 (Cisco) and port 0 (HP) and confirmed that the ISL came up (E_port 8G), I confirmed connectivity using fcping both ways.
• I connected the SAN to the Nexus and the servers to the HP
• Configured VSAN 10
• Added interfaces fc1/41 to 48 in VSAN 10
• Created 2 zones ( ESXI and Windows)
• Added the PWWN for the ESXI server and the MSA2040 to the ESXI zone
• Added the PWWN for the Windows 2k8 server and MS2040 to the Windows zones
• Created zoneset (Fabric-A) and added both the above zones in it
• Activated the FABRIC-A zoneset

The result is that the zones and zoneset are synchronised to the HP switch .I confirmed that I was able to see the servers and SAN WWN in the correct zones on the HP.

From the 8/20q switch I am able to fcping the SAN, Nexus and servers, however the Nexus is only able to fcping the SAN and the HP, it returns a “no response from destination”  when pinging the servers.

I have added the FCID for all the units in the same zones to see if it makes any difference to no avail the result seem to be the same. I have gone through various Nexus/MDS/HP/Qlogic user guides and forums; unfortunately I have not come across any that shows this specific topology.

 Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I’m attaching the nexus config and partial view of the “show interface brief” showing the fibre channel port status

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interface  Vsan   Admin  Admin   Status          SFP    Oper   Oper     Port

                                  Mode   Trunk                                       Mode  Speed  Channel

                                                Mode                                                    (Gbps)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

fc1/47      10       auto         on           up               swl         F          8             --

fc1/48      10       auto         on           up               swl         E          8             --