Basic question and query for resources

[Jonathan E. Deady]

Hi,
We've run into a problem with cascading switches and zoning. The limited information on the 'net says to avoid zoning over multiple switches. But an fellow admin zoned over the switches ( using java gui ), due to a problem with MSA1000 and host usability. Pre-zoning we had multiple switches with backups running fine. now the backup devices are gone from the hosts except the host on the same switch with the tape lib.

The above showed how little is availible online for fiber channel. Are there any good online resources for FC? Any suggestions for books? and I am signed up for http://education.itrc.hp.com/TrainerII/en_US/catalog/catalogDetail.jsp?id=prod1280004
are there others?

Thanks,

[Uwe Zessin]

Jonathan,

I never heard the 'avoid zoning over multiple switches' argument. On the other hand one needs to be careful during fabric design so that the ISLs (inter-switch links) do not get overloaded with traffic, but that is a question of performance, not reachability.

It looks to me that your fellow has made an error during zoning changes/setup. I assure you that can even happen with a single switch (I know it - guess why ;-)

[Jonathan E. Deady]

Thanks, again I didn't find much. A USENet post was were I saw the "avoid multi SW zoning". We have single switches that are zone without issue. I'll review what we have, I really dis-like brocade's cli...

Thanks,

[Mike Naime]

I cant agree with the "Don't zone over multiple switches" statement. I have 2 redundant 18-switch fabrics, 2 redundant 6-switch fabrics, and 2 redundant 2-switch fabrics. Storage/servers is spread across everything except the "Cores" on the 18-switch fabric. It works!

Your problem could be that the person that used the GUI tool enabled zoning and/or wrote a new config file that did not include your previous zones. Or, he might have removed the tape library alias, and re-added it back only to the one switch. Either way he did something stupid to mess up your fabric.

Mike Naime