ISL between switches

[anton.mssm]

hi, I have a novice isl question.

I have 2 new 9506 switches, they are seperate fabrics. we have some older switches that I would like to ISL to them.

By looking at the older switches I see the way they are ISLed and want to understand if this is correct and I should replicate this setup.

Basically I see port trunks ISLs between the switches, port fc1/10 and fc1/10 are TE ports going from switch A to ports fc1/20 fc1/21 on switch B.

Should I replicate this setup on the new switches ?

1.

on 9506 switch A create 2 E ports, fc1/47 fc 2/47

on 9506 switch B create 2 E ports, fc1/47 fc 2/47

2.

on old Switch create 4 E ports, port fc1/1, fc1/2, fc1/6, fc1/7

3.

Connect the fiber cables

4.

create trunks on new and old switches

Do I need to be concerend about vsans's merging or disrupting any data ?

old switch has a vsan 2 that everything is in and new switches have vsan 2 and 3.

I want the targets that in vsan 2 on the old switch to be able to talk to targets in vsan 2 and 3 on the new switch. 

sorry if this is confusing, I am still learning as I go along. I dont have a lab so everything is in production and I have to be careful not to blow it up.

[dynamoxxx]

whatever you do, do not connect fabric A and fabric B together ..that defeats the purpose of having redundant fabrics.

Can you draw a little diagram of what you are trying to do ?

@dynamoxxx

[anton.mssm]

this is what I would like to do, ISL the new switches to the old.

However if I connect both new switches A/B to the old switch fabric, wont the new switches see each other and be interconnected which is what we dont want?

[dynamoxxx]

it's hard to tell from your picture but is old switch 1-4 all connected together ? If all 4 old switches connected together then you just have one fabric (mash or partially mash) topology. Not good if you want any kind of redundancy. What is the goal of this project, get rid of old switches and move everything (hosts and storage ..etc) to 9506 ?

@dynamoxxx

[anton.mssm]

the old fabric all 4 are interconnected.

the goal is to slowly transition everything to the 9506's.

however I have moved my backup storage completely to the 9506 but I still have a few servers on the old fabric that need to get my storage. So i am thinking that I need to connect the fabrics together but only allow several servers to talk to the new switches

[dynamoxxx]

because the way you have your old switches interconnected, it's one fabric. If you connect your new switches to the same fabric and configure the same VSAN on both 9506 you will essentially merge them ..once again you will be in non-redundant configuration. The only way that i can think of making this work would be to use completely different set of VSAN on each 9506, connect them to your existing fabric and then use IVR. Is 9506 or "old "switch" licensed for IVR ?

@dynamoxxx

[anton.mssm]

not sure about IVR, i know that I can see the ENTERPRISE_PKG(permanant) license on the 9506's. and everything else shows as unlicensed Unused and 120 day grace period.

[dynamoxxx]

good, what about your old switches? What models are they anyway ?

@dynamoxxx

[anton.mssm]

the old switch is a 9214, but on there the enterprise_pkg is unlicenses and unused, no grace period

[dynamoxxx]

9124 does not support IVR so that option is not going to work. Are all hosts running some kind of multi-pathing software ?

@dynamoxxx

[anton.mssm]

yes the hosts are running netapp mpio

[dynamoxxx]

how about during your maintenance window you swing your hosts and arrays one path at a time to 9506 and don't even mess with trying to connect them into the old fabric.

@dynamoxxx

[anton.mssm]

thats what I did with my other servers that had 2 HBA's. The trick here is that i got 2 servers left.

1 is an older server with 1 HBA and its only a single sfp.

The other server is located in a different data center which is ISL'ed by the switches.

I can probably do something with one but the other is harder to get around to.

Btw, the other server is connected to a 9216 switch not a 9214.

[dynamoxxx]

for the one with 1 HBAs , hopefully you can schedule some downtime. The one that's located in another datacenter ..are you in a position to reconfigure/re-cable your infrastucture so that you have something like this:

host_HBA1 ---9126_A -----ISL--------9506_A ---Storage   (Fabric A)

host_HBA2 ---9126_B -----ISL--------9506_B ---Storage   (Fabric B)

@dynamoxxx

[anton.mssm]

I would have to take a look at the fiber patch panels that we have there... there may be a possibility to run it like that.

If there is a way to do it, what would I need to do on the switch ? set the ports to become E-ports on both switches and then connect them?