Monday 6 July 2009

Migrating SAN switches - Mcdata to Brocade

Migration of SAN switches is a common practice in datacenter. Detailed below are the steps to migrate from Mcdata to Brocade with no downtime.

1) Connect the new Brocade switch to Mcdata fabric
2) Change the interopmode of Brocade to Mcdata Fabric mode, now Brocade will be able to talk to Mcdata
3) disable/enable the ISL port connected to Mcdata. This would copy the active configuration from Mcdata to Brocade. For the newly added Brocade switch, the defined configuration will be empty, to copy the contents of active configuration to defined, issue the command cfgsaveactivetodefined on Brocade switch.
Now if needed the devices can be reconnected to Brocade switch (this need a scheduled down time). If the plan is to remove Mcdata completely from fabric and connect Brocade switches, then the interopmode of Brocade should be native.

Below are the commands to change the interopmode:

Usage: InteropMode [0|2|3 [-z McDataDefaultZone] [-s McDataSafeZone]]
       0: to turn interopMode off
       2: to turn McDATA Fabric mode on
           Valid McDataDefaultZone: 0 (disabled), 1 (enabled)
           Valid McDataSafeZone: 0 (disabled), 1 (enabled)
       3: to turn McDATA Open Fabric mode on