Tag Archives: fabric

Brocade FOS version 8 and 32G hardware

Brocade 4 Comments
8-ball

If you’ve been laying low during Christmas last year and have overlooked that Brocade announced its first to market with “Gen 6” (32G) hardware and FOS code 8, you’re forgiven. FOS 8 was mainly released to support the new G620 hardware but a lot of functions and features did either not work or were not supported yet. FOS 8 also dropped support for a lot of hardware which is a good thing IMHO. 8G equipment like the DCX4S, DCX as well as the single unit switches like the 5100 and 5300 were dropped.

Continue reading →

5.1 ISL/E-port configuration – The right way.

Config Guide No Comments

To many it has always been a mystery what happens when you connect fibre-channel switches to each other and all of a sudden magic happens and you can have an host “talk” to an array or an other device on an other switch. The same mystery however applies when this doesn’t work and you see “E-port segmented, port disabled”. In later FOS codes you may see some additional cryptic reasons like “ESC mismatch” but to many this is as gibberish as particle physics.

This post explains most of the important settings on an Brocade switch port destined to become an E-port in either a standalone master or in a slave role as part of a trunk. I’ll also highlight the importance of some settings when it comes to virtual channel initialization on both short and long distance settings as well as things seen on the wire when an ISL is segmented due to a fabric configuration problem. This post also touches on C/DWDM connectivity in relation to Brocade ISL’s.

Continue reading →

The technical pathways of Brocade in cloud storage adoption

Brocade Storage Networking No Comments

Brocade isn’t always very forthcoming about what they are working on. Obviously a fair chunk of development and engineering efforts are spent on cloud integration  and enablement of their software and hardware stack into this computing methodology. Acquisitions like Foundry, Vyatta and now Connectem show that the horizon has broadened the views of Brocade. To keep up with the ever increasing demands for network features and functions it makes sense to review the current product lines they have and when you read between the lines you may be able to spot some interesting observations.

Cloud Storage

Continue reading →

Cross-fabric collateral damage

Config Guide Storage Networking Troubleshooting No Comments

Ever since the dawn of time the storage administrators have been indoctrinated with redundancy. You have to have everything at least twice in order to maintain uptime and be able to achieve this to a level of around 99,999%. This is true in many occasions however there are exceptions when even dual fabrics (ie physically separated) share components like hosts, arrays or tapes.. If a physical issue in one fabric is impacting that shared component the performance and host IO may even impact totally unrelated equipment on another fabric and spin out of control.

Continue reading →

Brocade Fabric Assist Zones

Brocade No Comments

Huh, what did they come up with now??? A new way of zoning? FCoE zones? Is this the opposite of target initiated zoning??

Well, no, actually nothing of such sort. Brocade abandoned FA and QL zoning over a decade ago but so very rarely I run into it. From a FOS configuration perspective these zone still operate but no management application is able to handle it any more.

Continue reading →

FabricWatch FW-1050 alerts on SFP power failures

Brocade No Comments

Whenever you see Fabricwatch throw a lot of a lot of FW-1050 warning messages around indicating an out of boundary power value on SFP’s it is most likely these ports have never been polled by the CP’s.

2014/10/08-04:04:27, [FW-1050], 94159, SLOT 5 | FID 128, WARNING, xxxxxx, Sfp Supply Voltage for port 7/13, is below low boundary(High=3630, Low=2970). Current value is 0 mV.
2014/10/08-04:04:27, [FW-1050], 94160, SLOT 5 | FID 128, WARNING, xxxxxx, Sfp Supply Voltage for port 7/15, is below low boundary(High=3630, Low=2970). Current value is 0 mV.
2014/10/08-04:04:27, [FW-1050], 94161, SLOT 5 | FID 128, WARNING, xxxxxx, Sfp Supply Voltage for port 7/20, is below low boundary(High=3630, Low=2970). Current value is 0 mV.
2014/10/08-04:04:27, [FW-1050], 94162, SLOT 5 | FID 128, WARNING, xxxxxx, Sfp Supply Voltage for port 7/22, is below low boundary(High=3630, Low=2970). Current value is 0 mV.
2014/10/08-04:04:27, [FW-1050], 94163, SLOT 5 | FID 128, WARNING, xxxxxx, Sfp Supply Voltage for port 7/28, is below low boundary(High=3630, Low=2970). Current value is 0 mV.
2014/10/08-04:04:27, [FW-1050], 94164, SLOT 5 | FID 128, WARNING, xxxxxx, Sfp Supply Voltage for port 7/30, is below low boundary(High=3630, Low=2970). Current value is 0 mV.

Multi_mode_sfp_transceiver_IMGP7822_wp

On a normally operational port FOS will poll the SFP’s so now and then to check on various things. This includes the usual SFP inventory like serial number, Vendor ID, SFP capabilities etc. Additional things that checked are the TX and RX power levels, voltage and current being used on that particular SFP.

Continue reading →

RFE for Brocade FOS

Brocade 5 Comments

There is already a fair chunk of functionality in FOS but, being a support-engineer, you always come up with features and functions that will improve storage fabrics.

Being on a Ficon course last week and meeting some Brocade friends I requested them to add the following to the (most likely) long RFE (Request for Enhancement) list.

Continue reading →

Time with and without NTP on FC switches

Brocade Cisco Config Guide Fibre Channel Storage Networking Troubleshooting 1 Comment

I’ve been writing about troubleshooting issues for a while now and one of the things that is very difficult and most time consuming is correlating events between host systems, switches and storage arrays in the even of storage related errors. My advice has always been the same. Hook everything up to NTP systems, make sure that time and date settings, including time-zones and DST settings do fall within the drift values of the NTP client and that little nifty piece of software will make sure time is equal on all systems. (See below how to accomplish this.)
There are however some issues when this is not fully followed through and virtual switches are used.

Continue reading →

Brocade Fabric Vision – Version 1

Brocade No Comments

As you may have read in my previous posts I’m not really a fan of marketing driven terminology whereby existing technology is re-branded over and over again in order to obfuscate the underlying technology and make things more complex that they really are. The FC Gen-X nonsense is one of them. With Brocade Fabric Vision it took me a while however I see where Brocade is going with this and more where it is coming from.

Continue reading →

Fabric design, the good the bad and the ugly.

Config Guide Storage Networking Troubleshooting No Comments

For numerous years entire bibles have been filled with storage design concepts, pro’s, cons, benefits, cost structures on port-counts vs. performance etc. however whenever I get to see a fabric overview of what is connected to what and how stuff goes back and forth between initiators and targets it always (well around 99% of the time) looks like this.

standard_fabricObviously this is a, so called, core-edge fabric with . I’ll ask you the following question: Why is this a bad design. On second thought, I’ll spare you making a list of flaws and turn the question around. Why is this a good design? There is only one answer and this is why:

Continue reading →