Anyone know how to get SAN management software for Brocade 2250? 1

[mikerault]

I am looking at buying a Brocade 2250 but would need to find the management software for it (I want to set up zones to manage 2 SANs off of it to 4 servers) my questions are:

1. Do I need management software to do this?
2. Can this be done manually through the user interface to the switch itself?
3. Is the 2250 capable of zone based management for 2 SANS serving 2 servers each?

Thanks!

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

zoning can be done through the commandline , or through the onboard webinterface.You do not need a specific management software for brocade switches.regarding the 3rd point, I do not quite understand what you mean ,but you can create multiple zones on a san switch.

rgds,

R.

 

[mikerault]

Ok, I have the needed DB9 GBICs and the switch. I am looking to assign half of the ports to one zone and half to a second. In the first zone I will place my 8 disk NexStor CR8F fibre channel array and the two 32 bit servers that use it, in the second zone I will place the 18 disk Nexstor 18f array and the two 64 bit servers that use it.

Does this make sense, is this how zones are supposed to be used? This is my first time dealing with a fibre switch. Essentially I want one side isolated for use with the 32 bit systems and the other isolated for use of the 64 bit systems so there is no cross talk.

Like so:

Mike

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

This is exactly what zoning is about.You assign one group of ports to one zone,an other group of ports to a second zone.Then you save the zone config, and load that config as the current zone config.So in your case, you will have to group the upper ports of your sanswitch in 1 zone, the bottom half in a second zone.And there will be no communication between both zones.You can eather chose for hard zoning ( physical port zoning ) or soft zoning ( WWPN based zoning ).Hard zoning implies you have to change your zoning config if you have a broken port on the switch,softzoning implies that you will have to change the zoning if a FC adapter is replaced by another one ( WWPN changes for that adapter ),but softzoning allows you to stick a fibre in any port of the switch.

Hope this helps

rgds,

R.

 

[mikerault]

Thanks! Now I just need to track down the commands. I have a document from Brocade that talks about this but I don't remember if it has the actual commands.

 

[mikerault]

I installed the switch and I can see both SANs with all hosts. I decided to just divie up the storage between the boxes instead of using zoning. Now, when I attempt to use Oracle ASM to address the disks from the two 32 bit servers it halts at 7 gigabytes when I try to create a larger file (in ASm using a 8k blocksize I should be able to create a 32gb-1 byte size file). It won't let me utilize anything beyond 7 gig even though it shows in ASM that the diskgroup has over 500 gb in it. In fact, even if I try to use two files the second stops at the 7 gig boundary.

Is there an issue with crossing array boundries? The only thing I can think of is it is failing when it tries to reach over to the second san to stripe a disk, however, it would seem to me it would do it a lot earlier than 7 gb since this is a simple stripe with no mirror that I am setting up.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

 

[mikerault]

The issue was that with one form of the command to create the Oracle file the file goes to the internal storage on the server, which had only 7 gig available, even though the syntax used was supposed to go to the SAN. Changing hte format of the command corrected the issue.