Yahooo… (No not the company) FOS version 9 is here. The one that starts to support Gen 7 (64/256 Gbit) Fibre Channel. Now, just in case you’re getting excited and want to go clickety..clickety..click..upgrade <<<< hold on!!.
Tag Archives: FOS
Dynamic connectivity overview in “switchshow” output
In a Brocade environment the “switchshow” is one of the most used commands out there. It provides a quick overview of what the state of the switch is, switch name, switch attributes and a list of all ports and states. It had however its limitations which, with later codelevels, can be corrected.
Crackdown on FOS support
If you’ve read my articles over the last decade or so you’ve seen I’m keen on maintenance. Both from a physical hardware as well as software perspective a storage environment needs to be kept in tip-top shape at all times.
FOS 8.2.1 – the one that is required.. or not?
Like clockwork Brocade releases new FOS version around every 6 months. No news here. FOS 8.2.1 is however a release you may need to pay special attention to especially if you have X6 director class switches hooked up to a 240 volt, 50 Hz power mains as well as sitting between a rock and a hard place with the 7800 extension switch but don;t have the budget to go to a relatively pricey 7840. One other thing is the change in licensing hardening on pizza-box switches which makes the upgrade to this release a one-way street without being able to go back.
FOS 8.2.0 – The first Broadcom FOS release.
With the transition to Broadcom the Brocade entity now operating under that flag has release it’s first major release 8.2.0.
The release notes show a somewhat strange title: “Fabric OS v8.2.0 for Brocade SAN Product Family“. As if FOS ever was intended to run on any other platform than SAN switches ?!?!?!… Weird..
Brocade FOS version 8 and 32G hardware
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.
Traffic Isolation Zoning – The mistake of FOS
If there is one thing I would consider “the” blunder of FOS engineering it has to be Traffic Isolation zoning. I mean, creating such an administrative nightmare with obscure directions causing confusion and nasty pitfalls when one thing goes wrong is in many occasions a recipe for disaster.
Read on
Time to rethink your zoning strategy –peerzones
With the advance of the FC-GS and FC-SW protocols the change, or more the enhancement, of being able to use Target Driven Zoning provided Brocade with the option to tinker a bit on the implementation of the functionality.
Upgrade to FOS 7.4.x fails due to APM performance monitors
As I’ve written before some features in FOS 7.3 and older have been superseded by new tools such as MAPS and FlowVision. On of those is also Advanced Performance Monitor which let you set up monitoring points in the fabric to identify traffic patterns. Continue reading
Open Source Software (OSS) and security breaches in proprietary firmware
It is no secret that many vendors use open source software in their products and solutions. One of the most ubiquitous is Linux which is often the base of many of these products and used as core-OS because of it’s flexibility and freely available status without the need of keeping track of licenses (to some extent) and costs.
These OSS tools have different development back-grounds and are subject to policies of the person (or people/companies) who develop it. This obviously results in the fact that defects or bugs may result in security issues especially when it involves network related applications. Recently the bugs in OpenSSL and Apache have gain much traction as some of these are fairly significant and can result in access breaches or denial of service.