Migrating hosts from one SAN to another - advice needed

We have two SANs, they are NOT connected:
- old SAN: 2 fabrics (3 older Brocade switches each), Symm 8530(?),
Fibre Attached Tape Library (HP MSL6030), about 30 hosts (two paths
each)
- new SAN: 2 fabrics (currently 1, later 2-3 Brocade switches each),
Clariion CX700

Tape library has 3 SCSI devices - two tapes and a loader - and one FC
connection. We have a weird DB (Progress) for which there is no Legato
(or any other) client so a host must see the tape drive as local in
order to backup/restore.

Task - migrate hosts over to Clariion.

I can move hosts gradually from old SAN to new SAN but I'm losing tape
library and cannot take backups. I can't move the library first because
hosts on the old SAN will be without tape.

I can also buy one more FC card per host to connect to both SANs but
that's expensive.

The easiest would be to ISL old and new SANs to have access to both
Symm, Clariion, and tape from any SAN. EMC says there are a lot of
intricacies and wants lots of money for the re-architecturing of the
whole thing.

What are our options? Anybody has any ideas?

Thanks,
Alex

I would imagine adding the second HBA for the new SAN would be less
expensive that the EMC consulting.

If the new SAN is in a default state with no zones etc then I think I
would try the ISL idea. Backup the configs first of course. The just
extend the existing SAN and migrate everything to the new switches.

Can your Progress DB do backups to disk? If so then why not have it
backup to disk and then use Legato to pickup the DB backup files?

Regards,
Vic




sa wrote:
We have two SANs, they are NOT connected:
- old SAN: 2 fabrics (3 older Brocade switches each), Symm 8530(?),
Fibre Attached Tape Library (HP MSL6030), about 30 hosts (two paths
each)
- new SAN: 2 fabrics (currently 1, later 2-3 Brocade switches each),
Clariion CX700

Tape library has 3 SCSI devices - two tapes and a loader - and one FC
connection. We have a weird DB (Progress) for which there is no Legato
(or any other) client so a host must see the tape drive as local in
order to backup/restore.

Task - migrate hosts over to Clariion.

I can move hosts gradually from old SAN to new SAN but I'm losing tape
library and cannot take backups. I can't move the library first because
hosts on the old SAN will be without tape.

I can also buy one more FC card per host to connect to both SANs but
that's expensive.

The easiest would be to ISL old and new SANs to have access to both
Symm, Clariion, and tape from any SAN. EMC says there are a lot of
intricacies and wants lots of money for the re-architecturing of the
whole thing.

What are our options? Anybody has any ideas?

Thanks,
Alex

Ask EMC, why they want a lot of money. There is no(!) problem at all
ISLing the the switches.
I don't know what switches you are using. Maybe there are
inoperabilities. That would be the only "intricacies".

Migration (I hope you have WWPN zoning):

1. Intergrate the new switches to your SAN.
2. Plug the hosts, the library and the clarion to the new switches.
3. Everything should work after this downtime.
3.5 Wait................

4. Zone the new Clarion to the hosts.
5. Migrate your data to the new storage.
6. Finished.

Andy


On 16 Jan 2007 12:31:26 -0800, "sa" wrote:

We have two SANs, they are NOT connected:
- old SAN: 2 fabrics (3 older Brocade switches each), Symm 8530(?),
Fibre Attached Tape Library (HP MSL6030), about 30 hosts (two paths
each)
- new SAN: 2 fabrics (currently 1, later 2-3 Brocade switches each),
Clariion CX700

Tape library has 3 SCSI devices - two tapes and a loader - and one FC
connection. We have a weird DB (Progress) for which there is no Legato
(or any other) client so a host must see the tape drive as local in
order to backup/restore.

Task - migrate hosts over to Clariion.

I can move hosts gradually from old SAN to new SAN but I'm losing tape
library and cannot take backups. I can't move the library first because
hosts on the old SAN will be without tape.

I can also buy one more FC card per host to connect to both SANs but
that's expensive.

The easiest would be to ISL old and new SANs to have access to both
Symm, Clariion, and tape from any SAN. EMC says there are a lot of
intricacies and wants lots of money for the re-architecturing of the
whole thing.

What are our options? Anybody has any ideas?

Thanks,
Alex


--
Andreas Beckmann

http://www.muenster.de/~andy