Fabric Merge Guidelines

[waszkjaso]

Is there a document for or Best Practices Guide for Merging two Cisco MDS Fabrics together Via ISL or EISL ? Such as Zonenames have to be unique? Domain Id's? Principal switch and so on ?

Thanks

[Michael Brown]

No document that I know of, but you pretty much nailed the 2 main points. These points apply to a VSAN...not the entire fabric as a whole. It is possible for some VSANs to merge okay across an TE-ISL, while other VSANs on the same TE-ISL end up isolated. Check the 'show interface fc x/y' display via the CLI once you bring up both sides.

- Unique Domain IDs

- Zone names must be unique...or if the zonename does exist on both sides, it must contain the exact same members

- Zone mode, either basic or enhanced, but be the same.

If would also be good to ensure that both sides have the same 'default zone' policy of permit or deny. This is seen on the CLI display 'show zone policy vsan x' display.

I believe that this also a tool in FM that lets you can use to perform a zone merge analysis. Check under Zone->Tools or Tools->Zone.

Hope this helps,

Mike

[waszkjaso]

Thanks Mike This is all i could really find. I cant believe none of the Cookbooks have any of this info.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/ps4159/ps4358/products_tech_note09186a00802205ff.shtml

[techcrazzy]

check for Advanced Zoning concept in any Cisco administrator guide. it will teach you about zoning merging.

If you understand the basics of zone merging, that will answer all your queries..