Results of merging fabrics.

[Gary75]

Normally, when I add new Brocade SAN Switches, there is no zone configuration on the new switches, so the new switch gets configuration from existing SAN switches.

My question is; what happens if I add new SAN switches, or merge two working fabrics?
What is the process of merging two fabrics?

[Terri Harris]

The HP SAN Design Guide has many different merge scenarios. So take a look at its information on merging Brocade fabrics then reply back if you still have questions.

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi,

you have to merge the zoning configs beforehand. Our Brocade Support Engineer gave us an internal tool to unify the zoning configs before we merged 2 separate fabrics.

You should also make sure that all switches have a unique Domain ID. If you have identical Domain IDs in each Fabric, you will have to change one of them. This involves disabling the switch, and that can play havoc with your zoning configuration if you use Port-Based zoning.

Regards,
Stephen

[Phil West]

Adding a new switch is simple as it should not have any zone config in it so you just need to set a unique domain ID... Merging 2 existing switches with unique zone configs on both of them is tricky, but there is a Brocade tool to do it... Alternatively, disable the zone config on one switch, merge the fabric and then recreate them...