Nexus 5596 to join Brocade fabric

[Rigido1971]

Hi all, I tried to search but didn't find a "real" answer, it is not clear if it is possible or not...
Problem: I always worked with homogeneous Brocade fabrics. Some days ago my company asked me if it is possible to add a Nexus 5596UB to an existing (6 switches) production Brocade fabric. I underlined production as we should not interrupt SAN traffic on joining the fabric nor we should reboot and/or reconfigure existing switches.
I found a lot of info about "interoperability mode" on MDS switches but nothing on Nexus.

Can someone help me? Thanks.

[Walter Dey]

See the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch CLI Software Configuration Guide

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/configuration/guide/cli/CLIConfigurationGuide.pdf

p 601ff

About Interop Mode
Cisco NX-OS software supports the following four interop modes:
• Mode 1— Standards-based interop mode that requires all other vendors in the fabric to be in interop mode.
• Mode 2—Brocade native mode (Core PID 0).
• Mode 3—Brocade native mode (Core PID 1).
• Mode 4—McData native mode.

For information about configuring interop modes 2, 3, and 4, see the Cisco MDS 9000 Family
Switch-to-Switch Interoperability Configuration Guide, available at the following location:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/storage/san_switches/mds9000/interoperability/guide/intopgd.html

Configuring Interop Mode 1
The interop mode1 in Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches can be enabled disruptively or nondisruptively.

So in summary: Nexus 5000 only supports standard Interop Mode (Mode 1); which most likely doesn't help you at all.

[dynamoxxx]

i would explore of putting N5k into NPV mode

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/configuration/guide/cli_rel_4_0_1a/CLIConfigurationGuide/npv.html

[Walter Dey]

Agreed ! this is essentially the setup of UCS fabric interconnect (NPV mode) attached to Brocade.

However, the ususal caveats apply: no F-port-trunking-channeling

[Rigido1971]

Thank you all for the replies.
Actually we were able to set the Nexus (NX-OS 6.0(2)n2(3)) to interop-mode 3 and the Brocade (FOS v7.1.0c) with Core PID enabled (1), as we set the Brocade port to R_RDY mode the E_PORT came up and all the zoning info passed from the Brocade to the Nexus. We tried to make the Nexus as the Principal for the fabric (we are in a lab environment) and tried to create some fcalias, zoneset and all passed to the Brocade.

We're testing this for a migration purposes so we can't change the Brocade config, we just need to find a way to make the Nexus join the actual fabric in a nondisruptively mode...and it looks like this config is working as we would expect.

The questionis: We hope we will never need support but, just in case, will Cisco give us support for such configuration? :)

Thank you once again.
 

[Walter Dey · Accepted solution]

According to the datasheet

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-5000-series-switches/data_sheet_c78-618603.html

Native interop 1,2,3 and 4 is supported !

Therefore you are ok, and have a TAC supported configuration.

Fibre Channel and FCoE Features (Requires Storage Services License)

●  T11 standards-compliant FCoE (FC-BB-5) ●  T11 FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) (FC-BB-5) ●  Any 10 Gigabit Ethernet port configurable as FCoE ●  SAN administration separate from LAN administration ●  FCP ●  Fibre Channel forwarding (FCF) ●  Fibre Channel standard port types: E, F, and NP ●  Fibre Channel enhanced port types: VE, TE, and VF ●  F-port trunking ●  F-port channeling ●  Direct attachment of FCoE and Fibre Channel targets ●  Up to 240 buffer credits per native Fibre Channel port ●  Up to 32 VSANs per switch ●  Fibre Channel (SAN) PortChannel ●  Native Interop Mode 1 ●  Native Interop Mode 2 ●  Native Interop Mode 3 ●  Native Interop Mode 4 ●  VSAN trunking ●  Fabric Device Management Interface (FDMI) ●  Fibre Channel ID (FCID) persistence ●  Distributed device alias services ●  In-order delivery ●  Port tracking ●  Cisco N-Port Virtualization (NPV) technology ●  N-port identifier virtualization (NPIV) ●  Fabric services: Name server, registered state change notification (RSCN), login services, and name-server zoning ●  Per-VSAN fabric services ●  Cisco Fabric Services ●  Diffie-Hellman Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (DH-CHAP) and Fibre Channel Security Protocol (FC-SP) ●  Distributed device alias services ●  Host-to-switch and switch-to-switch FC-SP authentication ●  Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) ●  Fabric binding for Fibre Channel ●  Standard zoning ●  Port security ●  Domain and port ●  Enhanced zoning ●  SAN PortChannels ●  Cisco Fabric Analyzer ●  Fibre Channel traceroute ●  Fibre Channel ping ●  Fibre Channel debugging ●  Cisco Fabric Manager support ●  Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) ●  Boot from SAN over VPC/EVPC

[Walter Dey]

Btw. here is the Cisco Interop. Matrix

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/interoperability/matrix/intmatrx/Matrix5.html