How can I expand ports of "Brocade 5480 Embedded Switch" with Cisco MDS 9148s

choudhary.a · ‎11-02-2015

Brocade 5480 is a blade switch.Blade switch would needed to be exist as it will serve blade servers and will interconnect to MDS switch. Port 0 to 15 are internal ports to enclosure and 16 to 23 are external ports to Servers, Tape library and EVA.What are pre-requisties i need to take care of. What would be the migration approach? We have only one free prot on brocade which could be made as E-port.

I can see some free "disabled"ports on switches using switchshow command. However, field engineer confirmed that we have only one free port on each switch which could be used for extension. We can free some ports by moving connections to new Cisco MDS, and enable port trunking. So I am not sure if really we can enable trunking, and what are the requisites i need to take care of.

Further, We are connecting a new VNX 5200 on both switches, and enable zoning to different server ports so that multipath could be established. Can we do that? what information do i need to keep in mind, before configuring zoning of same server on two different vendor switches.

Walter Dey · ‎11-02-2015

E-port asks for interop mode between Brocade and MDS, which is a challenge. see my comments in

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12513186/san-interoperability-between-mds-and-brocade-switches
https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12613886/nexus-5548-config-hp-virtualconnect-npv-npiv

Walter.

choudhary.a · ‎11-03-2015

Hey Walter,

Thanks a lot bud for taking interest in my problem.

I can see some free "disabled"ports on switches using switchshow command on Brocade. However, field engineer confirmed that we have only one free port on each switch which could be used for extension (Strange!!). We can free some ports by moving connections to new Cisco MDS, and enable port trunking. So I am not sure if really we can enable trunking, and what are the requisites i need to take care of.

Further, We are connecting a new VNX 5200 on both switches, and enable zoning to different server ports so that multipath could be established. Can we do that? what information do i need to keep in mind, before configuring zoning of same server on two different vendor switches.

Do we have some other method. I would be highly obliged if some redirection towards some documentation could be established.

Many thanks in advance.

Walter Dey · ‎11-04-2015

Regarding Interop between MDS and Brocade, please see

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/interoperability/matrix/intmatrx/Matrix5.html#61103