Activating Zoning Brocade SAN Switch C7000

[Marc Moennikes]

Hello,

we have a c7000 blade center with 2 integrated brocade SAN switches.
At the moment there is no zoning enabled.
Now we want to configure zoning.
One zone for "windows", one zone for "unix".
There is also a eva4400 connnetced to the san.
All windows server are 2008r2, hyper-v cluster.
All blades are booting from san.
Is there a way to enable zoning online withour interruption?

Will windows "lose" the access to the luns, presented by the eva? Because the storage path maybe changes?

Thank you

Regards
Marc

[Sivaramakrishna_1 · Accepted solution]

Is the dual ports connected to both san switches?

If so is the MPIO installed on the all servers?

If both are fine then you can do the zoning on the SAN Switches one by one without any issues.

I have changed the zoning on even single port connected hosts and never find any issues.(considering less IO period)

[Marc Moennikes]

Hello,
thanks fpr your answer again :-)
Yes, MPIO is configured (Windows MPIO feature), both HBAs are connected.

Somebody said (not in this forum) there will be problems, because the storage path will change when the zoning is configured, so windows will lose luns.

And the connection between HBA<->SAN Switch <-> EVA will be temporarily disconnected when the zoning configuration will be set active...

Did you get no problems?

Regards

[Steven Clementi]

Zoning should not change the paths at all. Zoning simply tells your SAN devices what other devices they can see and talk to.


They are already talking to all other devices so the zoning is just going to limit the amount of devices it can see, not changing anything on the stuff it needs to see.

And since you have 2 fabrics... if you did one fabric at a time, you would be able to determine if things "changed" before putting youself in a bad position.

The enablement of a zone should cause little to no interruption in i/o... unless you don't zone your devices properly.


Steven

[SunnyS]

Agree with Steven.

Zoning should not change target addresses. In fact, I have enabled zoning many times, with HP-UX, after the devices with LUNs had already been presented to the host(s).

But it is disruptive. So, you definitely want to do one switch at a time.

[Sivaramakrishna_1]

Hi,

Dont forget to assign points if the answers are helpful.

[Marc Moennikes]

Hello,

thank you all for your help.

Regards

Marc