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EMC: Merging Fibre channel fabrics

 
 

You have two fabrics running off of two switches. You'd like to make them one fabric. How to do that? For the most part, it's simply connecting the two switches via e_ports.

Before doing that, however, realize there's several factors that can prevent them from mergingg

  1. Incompatible operating parameters such as RA_TOV and ED_TOV
  2. Duplicate domain IDs.
  3. Incompatible zoning configurations
  4. No principal switch (priority set to 255 on all switches)
  5. No response from the switch (hello sent every 30 seconds)

To avoid the issues above:

  1. Check IPs on all Service Processors and switches; deconflict as necessary.
  2. Ensure that all switches have unique domain ids.
  3. Ensure that operating parameters are the same.
  4. Ensure there aren't any zoning conflicts in the fabric (port zones, etc).

Once that's done:

  1. Physically link the switches
  2. View the active zone set to ensure the merge happens.
  3. Save the active zone set
  4. Activate the new zone set.