Migrating AIX servers from Brocade to Cisco Switches

[mfranceschini]

Hello,

I am going to move my hosts (AIX) and Storage from a Brocade SAN to a CISCO SAN with MDS9513 directors. I have read some considerations related to problems with the FCID. Has anybody ever done this migration? After reconnect the cables to the CISCO SAN what is the behaviour of the hosts? Is there any additional change to be done because the differen FCID? Thanks in advance.

[Steven.langdale_2]

Hi Marcos

1st thing to check is if you have dynamic tracking enabled on the fscsi devices for the HBA's.  If not, enable it.  If it is, you have nothing to worry about.

The change needs a reboot to apply though I'm afraid.

If it's not set and you cannot do a reboot AND you have dual connectivity to your SAN, then you can migrate one fabric act a time, deleting the hdisk devices (and underlying HBA), do a rescan, and then using your multipath SW to add them back (after the fibre move and zoning).

Steven

[mfranceschini]

Hi Steven

First off all... thanks for your feedback.

Fortunatelly, all of our AIX servers have dynamic tracking enabled. This is a recommendation from our storage supplier. We also have dual connectivity. And what about other OS such as RHEL, SLES, Solaris and HPUX... Should I have some  concern about changing FCID?

Marcos

[dynamoxxx]

HPUX is in the same boat as AIX (pre 11v3), domain is part of hardware path so you will need to do some purging/rescanning. Using PVLinks ?

[mfranceschini]

Yes, I use PVLinks...

[dynamoxxx]

will need to work with your system admin to make sure each volume group has primary and alternative paths to each LUN. Once you move one side to new fabric, delete old paths, rescan for new paths and add them to the volume group.