SAN Switches

[BR788674]

I currently have two HSG80's and and EVA3000 setup with 4 SAN Switch 16's ( two of which are EL models). I have a requirement to add more ports to this setup but I understand that more switches will require the purchase of upgrade licences for the 2 EL's.

Is it possible to zone to avoid this restriction? My thinking was to put the HSG's into 2 switches in one zone, the EVA into 2 switches in another and The backup libraries into a 5th switch in both.

I suspect the answer to this is no but would like to avoid having to pay for new switches and licences at the same time.

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

Dan,
you cannot use zoning to work around license restrictions. The suggestion from HP is to use always use zoning when an EVA is used to create a separate management zone for the EVA and the SMA anyway.

What type of EL switch is this? 212776-B21? As far as I can tell from the quickspecs this one has a full fabric license.

If this is the SANswitch 2/16-EL (283056-B21) it looks like it has a 4-switch fabric license in the base model.

I don't know what your current fabric looks like - it sounds like all 4 switches are in one fabric, but the only other way I see is to split and build two separate fabrics if you server connectivity allows for this?

How are they connected? Dual- or single-path?

[BR788674]

Hi,

Didn't think so but I thought I'd check. Yes, they are SANswitch 2/16-EL (283056-B21) with the 4 switch limit. I unfortunately can't split into two fabrics because of the backups, so will have to get them to stump up the cash for the upgrade licences.

Thanks for you help.