VC and GbE2c/Brocade coexistence for VC setup?

[AccuMegalith]

I migrated our corporate-application blade installation to Virtual Connect from standalone GbE2c and Brocade FC switches this morning. Given that this was my first exposure to VC, and the numerous changes required to migrate all our boot-from-SAN blades, I don't think the roughly 3.5 hours it took (1.5 of that was waiting for the VC firmware upgrades to run) was all that bad. Next up is our revenue/production system, and there is already some grief coming down at causing that long of an outage again.

So, I think I can guess the answer to this, but given my limited VC knowledge, I'll ask anyway. I have GbE2cs in interconnect bays 1 and 2, and Brocade FC switches in bays 3 and 4. Can I install the VC ethernet modules in bays 5 and 6, and FC modules in bays 7 and 8, respectively, for the purposes of initial domain setup, importing the enclosures, and upgrading the firmware? While keeping the existing switch connectivity up? No networks, fabrics, or profiles will be created. I would move the VC modules to their correct bays on the switchover date. If I can do this much, it will cut 40 - 50% off my migration outage. If it's possible, what disruption risk do I run?

[JKytsi · Accepted solution]

Sorry ...no. VC-ETH module must be always populated in bay 1

[Adrian Clint]

You could upgrade the firmware on the rev/prod VCs by putting them into the corp/app enclosure a pair at a time, doing the upgrade and then removing them.

Initial setup and import does not really take much time.
You could try exporting the config from the existing VC config and restoring it to the new VCs and then changing it to make it unique.

[AccuMegalith]

I was thinking this morning that someone was bound to ask why I didn't upgrade the firmware by installing the modules in the corporate enclosure. I neglected to mention that the production application is in a remote datacenter and the VC modules were already shipped offsite. To send them here and back in time for this coming weekend's (probable) installation is probably a wash with the additional down time in terms of cost and complexity.