connecting backup server to brocade switch help

carl_townshend · ‎08-27-2009

Hi all

We are implementing a new backup server for our SAN, the server currently had one connection to our brocade switch, is it possible to put a second connection to the brocade switch from the server? and will it team them or become a failover connection, I believe the FC card in the server is Q Logic

hope you can help

thanks

Carl

stephen2615 · ‎08-30-2009

Hi Carl,

Considering this is a Cisco forum.. For Brocade help, try:

http://community.brocade.com/home/index.jspa

FC SAN's do not use "teaming". Cisco uses port channeling, Brocade uses trunking. If you add all the HBA ports to the same switch, you can trunk it but you need a licence on the Brocade switch.

If you do nothing as far as trunking and there are two HBA ports is in the same zone, the server can still see its target if one port fails.

Stephen

carl_townshend · ‎10-09-2009

hi there

so i gather this wont cause a loop? as the cards have different wwn's ? and also does FC SAN's use broadcast like ethernet ?

stephen2615 · ‎10-09-2009

There are no restrictions whatsoever to how many ports you use to connect from your server to the switch. I had a single server that used 16 ports to each switch.

I was wrong with the first post as I got sidetracked talking about how FC does trunking. You can't trunk from the server to the switch. It does from switch to switch though. The server multipathing software manages the traffic to the storage array normally in a round robin approach.

If you just have a backup server <-> switch <-> FC tape drive, the traffic is managed by the backup media agent. Backups are pretty simple as tape drives are just one thing. They are not like storage arrays.

As far as broadcast goes, look up RSCN.

FC networking is different to IP so get a book and read up about it.