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Changing device-alias to enhanced

jasontheis
Level 1
Level 1

I am trying to determine the risk of changing my device-alias listings from basic to enhanced.  The documentation leads me to believe that this is a fairly benign process.  Is this a change I need to be concerned with?  The documentation also dictates that the current zones will not change the device-alias members from basic to enhanced after enabled.  It sounds like I would have to remove and re-add each member in order for the enhanced device-alias to take effect within the zones.  Can someone confirm on this as well?  Any gotchas that I need to be concerned with?

Thanks!

6 Replies 6

james_williams
Level 1
Level 1

You can do this on the fly... no issues.  I have done this quite a few times without issues.  Just make sure all the switches in the fabric have this enabled so you can use it.  Then start migrating your zones leveraging device-aliases.  Device-aliases are much better than fc alias as long as you only have MDS switches in the mix as device-aliases are a cisco thing.

jim

Jim

To clarify, you've migrated from standard device-alias to enhanced quite a few times OR from fc aliasing to device.  Your post talks about both.

Thanks

Steven

Hi, both actually.  Enabling enhanced does

not impact the switch production trafic.  It just turns in on.  You can run an import of existing fcaliases to device-aliases if you want to (see manual). Or just start adding them in to the dev aliase db.  Then you can add these new dev aliases to your zones, then activate.  Then remove your old fcaliases, reactivate then start using dev aliases only.  I've also removed the old fcaliases from the production zones, then added dev aliases then re-activeated.  But, this is more drastic and can impact production traffic. If you have one hba I wouldn't do this.

jim

I had most as device-alias not fc-alias.  I have used the merge command but it is still aggrivating to have to rebuilt all of the zones anyways.

It turned out not to be a big deal because my zones are built using the pwwn and not the device-alias.  Good thing too since the merge wrote over the device-alias and I had to restore portions of it (long story).  It was not anything I could prevent.  I was just glad it did not cause production traffic to go down.  Curious though.... Cisco says best practice is for zones to be bult based on pwwn.  What does everyone else feel is best practice when it comes to zones and/or what is everyone's preference based on their experience?

Thanks!

Actually, Cisco MDS best practice is using device-aliases.  Now if you are leveraging interop obviously pwwn has to be used.  Device aliases are great.  Define once, use across all vsans and ivr too.  Swap out an hba... only one change.  Fcalias are vsan specifc.  Yes, pwwns are good across all vsans.  BUT, if you have ever tried finding a pwwn among thousands of logged in hbas mucking around with ivr zoning etc. you will see how dev aliases are great.

jim

I had read that too but the support technician was adamant that using pwwn was best practice.  Personally I think device-al

ias make the most sense but in this case I was so glad it was not the case.  I would have been hosed.

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