Can you use both A and B channels to the same switch? 1

[mikerault]

My SANs have 2 fibre channels each (A and B) currently I am hooking up with only the A channel on each SAN to a Brocade switch and then hooking in with the nodes.

My question is, will the brocade recognize that the two channels are from the same device and just use the added bandwidth or will it make it look like thre are double the disks available on each SAN?

I want to increase the bandwidth to the SANs.

 

[jjjon]

You can certainly put whatever ports you want onto the same switch. Assuming you zone the 2 ports to the same host for failover/load balancing, you will mostly liekly need load balancing software to handle extra paths.

 

[p5wizard]

And your SAN server must also be able to handle the extra paths or the loadbalancing across the 2 ports. E.g. on some types of SAN servers LUNs are presented to hosts via portA, with backup via portB so you (or your SAN guys/girls) may have some extra work there to divide the load among both ports.

Also, putting all your FC connection on the same switch is not such a good idea. It would be better to invest in a second switch and connect all your devices via separate FC-adapters over the two switches (essentially building a dual SAN - avoiding a single point of failure).


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[mikerault]

Good idea but this is a home office install (I do a lot of testing on databases so need the IO a SAN gives) so the redundancy isn't a real issue.

Mike

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

you will need a separate license on your brocade to enable trunking of the fcports

rgds,

R.

 

[mikerault]

I have the following licenses:

Web license
Zoning license
SES license
Fabric license
Extended Fabric license
QuickLoop license

What else would I need?

Mike

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

The trunking is mostly used with ISL's, this requires a ISL trunking license,I'm not 100 pct sure if this license will be valid for non-ISL trunking.I'm not even sure that non-ISL trunks can be made.

kind rgds,

R.

 

[JG5]

Who is the SAN vendor? They should be able to provide you with MPIO software. You can then potentially use both ports and configure them for failover or load balancing depending on the options.