Brocade Switch -How do I ?

[Sajeev2007]

Hi All,

Someone in our organisation left and now I need to reverse engineer a lot of stuff.

How do I find out which hosts are on which port on a switch so I can label then FC cables.
This sounds like a vauge and generic question, but any and all ideas are welcome
Thanks,

[Luk Vandenbussche]

With the command 'switchshow' you can see the WWN of the adapters connected to a port.

Now the question is to find a link between the WWN of the adapter and the host in which is in installed.

Perhaps the configuration of your san might help here.
Which San do you have?

[Sajeev2007]

Hi Luk, Yes I did a switchshow and Ican see all the wwn's but is there an easier way to find the hostnames ? I guess they used a naming convenction here when creating an alias, like Servername_port , how do i find out from that ?

Thanks,

Sajeev

[Ivan Ferreira]

You can use the cfgshow/alishow commands. If the previous SAN Admin created aliases for ports/WWN you will see in the output of these commands. Aliases are created with alicreate command.

You can also try the portshow command. You can set port names that describe what is connected there.

You can also use Brocade San Health (free software) that will graph all your SAN network.

[Amar_Joshi]

There are two ways if the previous guy did a great job then you can look at:

1. ZONING: Use "cfgshow" command and look under effective configuration. You will find several "ports" or "WWNs" or "aliases" zoned together.

1a. if ports are zoned together, then probably you will have to see if physically ports are labeled with server/storage names. Otherwise left with the option to check their WWNs respectively.

1b. If WWWn are zone together, only option is to relate the WWNs with their respective servers.

1c. If Aliases are zoned, use aliasshow to look for which alias refer to which port and then check physically ports which server they are coming from.

2. use the command "portname [portnumber]" (e.g. portname 3). In general 90% people don't use it.. but if you are lucky enough you will see which port is what.


Good luck..

[Owen_15]

Hi Sajeev,

If you run the command
#supportshow
and capture its output. It will display all the information that you could ever want to obtain from the SAN.

A lot of it you can ignore, but you will be able to see everything and determine what parts are going to be useful for you.

Regards
Owen

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi,

Ivan is on the right track. Use SAN Health from Brocade.
http://www.brocade.com/support/sanhealth.jsp

This will collect all info from one or more fabrics. I had to take over a SAN hardly any documentation. Some Windows HBA drivers (e.g. from Emulex), can also send the host name to the Switch Name Server, which SAN Health can read and put in a nice Excel Sheet for you. If it does not have the host name, it will at least say what aliases or zones are used for that port or WWN.
That will at least give you a starting point, and you can use the other tips here to expand your documentation.

Regards,
Stephen

[Sheldon Smith]

All of the above replies assume the aliases on the switches are correct and up-to-date. You may want to check each host to determine its WWN(s). You did not mention which OS(es) you have. At least for Windows, for the QLogic HBAs there is a program called SANsurfer, and for the Emulex HBAs, a program called HBanywhere. Both are installed on the Windows host; pick the one you would need for a given server. When run, it displays LOTS of information, including the node and port WWN for each HBA port.
Once you know without doubt the WWNs of a host, it is a lot easier to determine if the aliases are (still) correct, and if the host definitions on the storage devices are also correct.
I did exactly this process with my customer the beginning of this week. We interrogated each host for its WWNs, then compared that to the WWNs shown on the switches and examined the zoning configuration. We found several aliases and zones that pointed to non-existent systems, and a couple that referenced old host names.