Tag Archives: fc

Brocade CF Replacement Hints

This post is based on a submission from a reader of this blog Eberhard, maybe primarily of the popular Brocade SAN upgrades post. Many thanks for this, hoping it will help someone out there!

The topic here is how to replace the embedded Compact Flash card if that breaks.

You can read about how to do that in the PDF below:

If your CF drives are exactly the same size (not in GB, in blocks) as the one in Brocade then you could get away with dding the whole /dev/sda – which would simplify the process a little.

Again, many thanks for the contribution!

Brocade Accredited Server Specialist – BASP

http://www.brocade.com/education/certification-accreditation/accredited_server_connectivity/curriculum.page

I’m currently preparing for yet another accreditation, the previous one I took was the BADCS,

The BASP (Brocade Accredited Server Specialist) appear to focus on the server side. Things like:

  • how to install drivers
  • HBA management tools
  • describe features
  • how to run diagnostics

This accrediation has the most questions of all the current ones, but it has the same amount of time allotted (one hour) so this exam will have a lot less time available for each question.

The curriculum for this accreditation are also free, they are called Introduction to HBA and Introduction to CNA. There’s also some docs about the 1860 Fibre Adapter. They can be found on Brocade’s Saba/training website under my.brocade.com.

 

// Update 20140422: This accrediation has been replaced with something else. See the current list here: http://www.brocade.com/education/certification-accreditation/index.page?

Brocade Accredited Data Center Specialist – BADCS

 

Time to study for another one :) Working my way towards the “Data Center Track”. To complete it it would be enough for me to complete 5 accreditations.

This one has a pretty cool name – BADCS!

http://www.brocade.com/education/certification-accreditation/accredited-data-center-specialist/prerequisites.page

I haven’t tried one of these Accredited exams before, but as far as I can tell:

  • Cheap: only 20$ USD
  • The exam is web based, no need to find a test center, you can do it exactly when you want to.
  • Accreditations do not expire
  • You don’t _have_ to take the course in the prerequisites before taking the exam, but it is recommended :)

Also, for this Accreditation the pre-requisite is the FC-101 course on brocade’s SABA page – and it’s free!

– The BADCS exam consists of 38 questions and lasts 60 minutes
– To pass this exam you must get a score of 71% or better 

So that’s about 27 correct out of 38 questions.

The objectives are on this page.

The only part I was initially not entirely sure about is the “Given a scenario, describe when portlog dumps are required”. The objectives indicate that a Fibre Channel theory knowledge is necessary, so the FC-101 course seems like a very good idea to study. I doubt many people remember specific FC mechanisms/theory if they don’t work with these occasionally. Like the well-known addresses – who remembers the address of the name-server or controller? =)

My general tip for the BADCS: Learn the material of the FC-101 course. Really. Learn. it.

You may be tricked into thinking that Brocade’s accrediations are easy because you can do them from home.

Storage FC HBA Transfer Size Tuning

HP just published an advisory describing how to tune some parameters for Emulex, Qlogic and Brocade Fibre Channel HBAs: c02518189. It sounds like these are new, but these changes have been around for at least 6 months in all three vendors’ HBAs.

Emulex

“Emulex driver version 2.42.002 or later, along with OneCommand Manager version 5.1.53.2 or later,”

Use HBAnywhere to change these.

Examples to tune the server or port level transfer size:

  • 128 kbytes, set the LimTransferSize = 2 and ExtTransferSize = 0 (default)
  • 512 kbytes, set the LimTransferSize = 0 (default) and ExtTransferSize = 0 (default)
  • 1 Mbytes, set the LimTransferSize = 0 (default) and ExtTransferSize = 1

Qlogic

This is part of the Qlogic SANSurfer utility.

  • c:\>qlfc -tsize /fc
  • c:\>qlfc -tsize /fc /set 128
  • c:\>qlfc -tsize /fc /set default

Brocade

  • bcu drvconf –key bfa_max_xfer_len –val 64
  • bcu drvconf –key bfa_max_xfer_len –val 128

BCFP – good threads in the brocade forum

How to set up two FCIP tunnels between two B7500: http://community.brocade.com/message/15261

Connecting two sites via FCR: http://community.brocade.com/message/16828#16828

Set up FCIP between two B7800: http://community.brocade.com/message/14216#14216

Why is there an IP in ipaddrshow on FC interfaces: http://community.brocade.com/message/3978#3978