6 – Non Standard configuration options

Features and licenses

Ever seen these?

License Envelope
License Envelope

If not you might just have thrown away one of the most expensive pieces of you purchase. This is the envelope that contains the transaction key which allows you to generate the license for the specific feature you bought. If you have discarded it I must say that is not really smart. It’s like throwing away the car-keys after you bought a brand new vehicle.

DO NOT THROW AWAY THIS ENVELOPE

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4 – Standards in operation

Consistency is one of the most important things in a computing environment. There are abundant examples where configuration inconsistencies have led to disastrous events leading up to dropped databases, setting up disk-mirrors in the wrong direction (ie overwriting a perfectly good partition with an empty one), operational mistakes due to wrong or unclear naming conventions and you name them. Anywhere where people work mistakes will be made so in order to try and prevent these kind of mistakes strict standards in operations needs to be followed. In the majority of businesses around the world some sort of framework for processes and changes is followed in the likes of ITIL or any of the alternatives.

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3 – Reference architecture

In this series of post I will start with a simplified SAN architecture based upon a dual-fabric edge-core-edge design. (Remember this might not be a good design as I described here but for the purpose of this guide it will suffice.) As we go along with other topics we’ll extend it as needed. The top switch is SW01, the core switch is SW02 and the bottom switch is SW03. This is valid for both fabrics.

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2 – Creating the management landscape

The first thing to think of when creating a Brocade storage network has nothing to do with a switch configuration at all. Its about the surrounding management landscape. There are numerous management software options available from a multitude of vendors including Brocade with Network Advisor. If you have purchased BNA then congratulations, you have a solid toolkit in your hands to take care of nearly everything you need to manage, maintain and troubleshoot the SAN. Despite this there are more things to take into account.

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