NEXUS 5548UP LAYOUT - Shared flogi between nexus

[Floriano de Souza]

Hello,
I have 4 Nexus 5548UP, and I need to do they share information of FLOGI among the switches N5K1 and N5K3.

Today i can do this, the way shown above.
But I would like to have another link redundancy between switches N5K1 and N5K3.
I already tried adding this link redundancy on a port-channel, but when I do that I can not share the FLOGI informations between switches.
I would like your help to know what I can do in this case?.

[Walter Dey · Accepted solution]

FC view: today you have 2 separate dual fabric SAN's: N5k1 and N5k2 resp. N5k3 and N5k4

You can now build one dual fabric SAN, by setting up a ISL Link (or FC port channel) between N5k1 and N5k3 resp. N5k2 and N5k4. This will then distribute the flogi resp. fcns database as you requested.

I would do this with native FC, not FCoE.
 

[Floriano de Souza]

This is a very good solution.
But i wanted to use the link ethernet 10Gb.
I found some interesting links that show the interconnect between vPC-vPC domains.
I believe it is a very good solution.

What do you think of this implementation.

http://www.netcraftsmen.net/blogs/entry/configuring-back-to-back-vpcs-on-cisco-nexus-switches.html.

I forgot to say that in this scenario does not have a fabric license.

[Walter Dey]

In your picture I see, that you plan to use classical Fibrechannel for storage and FCoE for servers.

Fibrechannel and multihop FCoE has strict design rules of separate fabrics, which is very different to Ethernet (and IP) networking.

Specially vPC violates this separation; see eg. Fibre Channel over Ethernet Operations

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/operations/n5k_fcoe_ops.html#wp1079705

and

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/mkt_ops_guides/513_n1_1/n5k_enhanced_vpc.html#wp1162674

SAN A and SAN B Traffic Isolation

You can deploy FCoE in an Enhanced vPC topology. Traditionally, the SAN network maintains two fabrics, the SAN A and SAN B. The traffic from side A is isolated from side B. Hosts and storage arrays are attached to host SAN networks for high availability. The FCoE traffic in an Enhanced vPC topology maintain the traffic isolation for two SAN networks. The FCoE command ensures the FCoE traffic from the FEX is only sent to one Cisco Nexus 5000 Series device is as follows:

[Floriano de Souza]

Yes but in this environment I have both types.
I also have an FCoE storage and servers with FC.

[Walter Dey]

With the exception of the transport, FCoE = FC;

Forget vPC for FCoE / FC; it violates the Fabric A/B separation / isolation