Brocade
About
Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. is an American technology company specializing in data and storage networking products. Originally known for its leadership in Fibre Channel storage networks, the company has expanded its focus to include a wide range of products for New IP and Third platform technologies.
Brocade was founded in August 1995, by Seth Neiman (a venture capitalist, a former executive from Sun Microsystems and a professional auto racer), Kumar Malavalli (a co-author of the Fibre Channel specification).
The company’s first product, SilkWorm, which was a Fibre Channel Switch, was released in early 1997. A second generation of switches was announced in 1999.
On January 14, 2013, Brocade named Lloyd Carney as new chief executive Officer.
Brocade FC Switch have so many models with the port variations, the details are below
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| List of Brocade FC switches |
Work flow for zoning activity
The Platform team will inform you that they are going to provision a new server in the environment and requests you to give the free port details on the switches which are exists in the data center.
Once you share the information to Platform team, they co-ordinate with the Data center guys to lay the cables between the server and switch. (Already the storage ports or tape library are connected to the switch).
After laying the cables, Platform team will requests you to check the connectivity and they shares the server HBA WWPN to verify with the connected one.
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| Physical cabling between Server and storage through Switch with Single path |
| Physical cabling between Server and storage through Switch with Multipath |
Zoning can be done in 7 simple steps, the pictorial diagram is as follows.
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| Steps to perform zoning |
Zoning steps:-
- Identify the WWPN of Server HBA and Storage HBA.
- Create Alias of server and storage HBA’s.
Alicreate
- Create zones for server and storage by using the command
Zonecreate
- We need to check whether active configurations is present or not by using the command.
Cfgactvshow
- If an active configuration already exits we just need to add the zone to this, by using the command.
Cfgactvadd
- If not there we need to create new active configuration by using the command.
Cfgcreate
- Save it and enable it.
Please find the example for zoning,
alicreate “ser ver_hba”,”11:11:11:11:11:11:11:11″
alicreate “storage_hba”,”22:22:22:22:22:22:22:22″
zonecreate “server_hba-storage_hba”,” ser ver_hba; storage_hba “
cfgcreate “cfg_switch1″,” server_hba-storage_hba “
cfgenable ” cfg_switch1″
cfgsave
Brocade switches uses both web and CLI, the table below displays some but not all the CLI commands.
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help |
prints available commands |
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switchdisabled |
disable the switch |
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switchenable |
enable the switch |
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licensehelp |
license commands |
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diaghelp |
diagnostic commands |
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configure |
change switch parameters (BB credits, etc) |
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diagshow |
POST results since last boot |
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routehelp |
routing commands |
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switchshow |
display switch show (normally first command to run to obtain switch configuration) |
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supportshow |
full detailed switch info |
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portshow |
display port info |
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nsshow |
namesever contents |
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nsallshow |
NS for full fabric |
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fabricshow |
Fabric information |
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version |
firmware code revision |
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reboot |
full reboot with POST |
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fastboot |
reboot without POST |
B-Series (Brocade) zoning commands are detailed in the below table
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zonecreate (zone) |
create a zone |
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zoneshow |
shows defined and effective zones and configurations |
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zoneadd |
adds a member to a zone |
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zoneremove |
removes a member from a zone |
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zonedelete |
delete a zone |
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cfgcreate (zoneset) |
create a zoneset configuration |
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cfgadd |
adds a zone to a zone configuration |
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cfgshow |
display the zoning information |
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cfgenable |
enable a zone set |
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cfgsave |
saves defined config to all switches in fabric across reboots |
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cfgremove |
removes a zone from a zone configuration |
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cfgdelete |
deletes a zone from a zone configuration |
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cfgclear |
clears all zoning information (must disable the effective config first) |
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cfgdisable |
disables the effective zone set |
B-series creating a zone commands
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Creating zone by WWN |
zonecreate “zone1”, “20:00:00:e0:69:40:07:08 ; 50:06:04:82:b8:90:c1:8d” |
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Create a zone configuration |
cfgcreate “test_cfg”, “zone1 ; zone2” |
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saving the zone configuration |
cfgsave (this will save across reboots) |
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enable the zone configuration |
cfgenable “test_cfg” |
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saving the zone configuration |
cfgsave |
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view zoning information |
zoneshow or cfgshow |
aliAdd Add a member to a zone alias
aliCopy Copy a zone alias
aliCreate Create a zone alias
aliDelete Delete a zone alias
aliRemove Remove a member from a zone alias
aliRename Rename a zone alias
aliShow Print zone alias information
cfgAdd Add a member to a configuration
cfgCopy Copy a zone configuration
cfgCreate Create a zone configuration
cfgDelete Delete a zone configuration
cfgRemove Remove a member from a configuration
cfgRename Rename a zone configuration
cfgShow Print zone configuration information
zoneAdd Add a member to a zone
zoneCopy Copy a zone
zoneCreate Create a zone
zoneDelete Delete a zone
zoneRemove Remove a member from a zone
zoneRename Rename a zone
zoneShow Print zone information
cfgClear Clear all zone configurations
cfgDisable Disable a zone configuration
cfgEnable Enable a zone configuration
cfgSave Save zone configurations in flash
cfgSize Print size details of zone database
cfgActvShow Print effective zone configuration
cfgTransAbort Abort zone configuration transaction