Replacing Brocade/Quick Loop with FC-AL Hub.

[John Tyler]

We have couple of K580s running 10.20/service Guard connected to EMC symmetrix via "quick loop" enabled ports on 2 brocade switches.

We want to replace the switches with regular FC/AL hubs to free up the ports on the switches.

I am not sure if this replacement would change the device entries (/dev/dsk/cXtYdZ) for these EMC disks.

Would the Volume groups on these disks be still accessible after connecting to the FC-AL hub.

Any ideas and experiences?
Thanks in advance.

[Vincent Fleming]

I'm not sure about the device names changing. They may. I would be prepared just in case it does. Export the volume group so that it can be imported after the change. Save your lvmtab, too.

There have been other postings here that are related; you should search for them and read them.

Good luck

[Mark van Silfhout]

A hub is transparent to the SAN, so as long as you do not change the ports on the switch wich are connected to the EMC (so place the hub on the servers side) your devicefiles should not change.
Be aware you servers have to share bandwith when connected to a hub...

Regards,

Mark

[Andrew R.]

Are you using Volume Logix on the EMC ?
basically your device file should not change as long as you don't change the fibre connection on the server side or change the target lun on the EMC.exporting the VG is always a good idea for any case,

#vgexport -p -s -m /tmp/VGname.map /dev/vg##

if you're using Volume logix you'll have to do more work, pls. let me know.

[David Navarro]

When you use a switch with quickloop for servers is like a hub, then, I think that device files doesn't change.
I a very good idea execute vgexport -s -m, if you prefeer with -p option. Be careful if you alternates alternate link between io cards, if you make a vgimport, you will loose this load balancing, and you will need to redo it.