Cisco NPV and Brocade fabrics

[stephen2615]

Greetings,

There is a very informative page that describes adding switches configured for NPV with other Cisco core switches. It discusses lots of interesting features but it seems very focused on Cisco gear which is understandable.

I need to add some NPV enabled switches to Brocade Director switches. Four ports (or six depending) will be used as port pairs from the Cisco switches to the Brocade switches. I was really hoping that I could enable NPV on the Cisco switch and just plug them into the Brocade fabric. How are port pairs configured this way? Can the GUI or the CLI be used to configure every thing and then once the commit process is enabled, the switch will be ready for NPV to the Brocades?

Is there any improvement by using NX-OS 4.1 instead of SAN-0S 3.x.

How does load balancing work with NPV?

Stephen

[stephen2615]

Greetings

So far no answers. I hoped someone out there had done something like this.

I noticed that VSAN's are still used with Cisco core switches so I am wondering do I need to consider VSAN's and interop mode if I connect to the Brocades? Perhaps a really simple VSAN??

Stephen

[stephen2615]

Just in case anyone really cares, I created a basic VSAN and shoved all the interfaces in it. I attached the NP ports to the Brocade switch ports that were npiv enabled and all went well.

Interestingly enough, when NPV is enabled, the switch knows there is a VSAN but Fabric Manager doesn't.