Implications of replacing switch brocade

[Carlos F. Baladrón]

I have hp-ux servers were connected to SAN (EMC DMX) with 2 switch (redundancy)
What are the implications of replacing one of brocade fibre channel switch with software (wwn) zones with another ??
I'd like to know the detailed procedure for replacing the switch in a HP-UX 11i environment with pv link Can I:
save config
replace switch
load config
and continue working?? change HW path ?

[Thomas Bianco · Accepted solution]

the first time i read this, i thought you were tring to remove one of the switchs and replicate it's behevior by zoning out the one remaining production switch.
now that i reread it, it looks like you wish to replace one switch with a new one fresh from the box.
which is correct?

either way; assuming you have:
1) enough ports on your switch to handle all the connections
2) enough configuration to rezone your switch
3) enough downtime to do it and
4) a good recent backup or 2
it shouldn't be a problem.

be certain to replicate zoning exactly, my EMC has very specific zoning requirements (i.e i must have a zone containing only the ports required for every connection i wish to allow).

for the first option, consider the following: you probably bought this array for redundancy, and moving all your connections to one switch will create a single point of failure.

if it's the second option, and the new switch is supported with both your FC cards and array, you should be golden. i would check with your emc support guy and be dead certain the hardware is supported.

also, if your runnning powerpath (the redundancy software for recent EMC arrays) you shouldn't need to reconfigure at all. if not, you still shouldn't have to reconfigure, but you may have to umount the luns before starting

[Carlos F. Baladrón]

NOT,I'm tring to remove one of the switchs that this failed and replace it by another good

[Thomas Bianco]

then you should have no issues. if they are the same model, you might even be able to save the config by FTP and reload it onto the new switch.

my brocade silkworms have a config admin page under the admin view. among other things it allows you to save and restore the config by FTP.

[Carlos F. Baladrón]

it changes the hard path to disck ???

[Thomas Bianco]

i'm not sure what you mean.

if you zones are configured with WWN or aliases, your port config should be unimportant. if you're replacing the switch with the switch with the same version your config should be portable. if your config is identical, it should be transperant to the upper layer.

assuming you're running powerpath or something similar, you should be able to do it online.

i've actually done this once without issue. we barrowed 2 broacade silkworms from dell to assist with our migration to a new array, and were able to migrate the config (and all the connections) from the loadner brocades to the production broacades seamlessly. thanks to powerpath we didn't even have to declare downtime to do it.