How to direct specific FC traffic over a dedicated DWDM link

Question

I have a couple of Brocade 6520 switches, connected over DWDM over 40 miles (60 kilometers). Let's focus on 1 fabric: Dear fellow ECN people, On the right (site 2) I have a host with 3 HBAs. HBA 2 is connected to fabric B (not shown), HBA 1 is connected to fabric A and I would like to use HBA 3 for specific traffic using a different DWDM color. The red trunk is for regular traffic from HBA 1 to the storage on site 1 (storage ports 1, 2 and 3). How can I direct traffic from HBA 3, using the purple link to the 6520 switch on site 2, using the green DWDM link to the switch on site 1 to access specific LUNs on the storage box on site 1? I'm thinking port zoning on the switches might do the trick, so connecting ports 1 and 4 on the switch on site 2, therefore forcing traffic from HBA 3 to use the green DWDM link, but then again: would this cause only traffic from HBA 3 to use this link? What do you think? Any help is appreciated.

Allen Ward · Accepted Answer

You are definitely going to want to check out Traffic Isolation (TI) zoning. It is made for just such a use case. You can define specific ISLs to use for connectivity between certain endpoints.

I haven't used it myself so I can't go into detail on HOW to do it, but it's all in the Brocade admin guide. There is an entire chapter (33 pages) dedicated to TI zoning. Take a look and see how that fits.

RRR · Answer

Thank you Allen. I'll dive into this.

Connectrix

Was this post helpful?