Replacing a pair of FibreBridge 6500N bridges with 7600N or 7500N bridges

To take advantage of the additional FC2 port on the FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges and reduce rack utilization, you can nondisruptively replace 6500N bridges and consolidate up to four storage stacks behind a single pair of FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges.

Before you begin

You need the admin password and access to an FTP or SCP server.

About this task

You should use this procedure if:

This procedure is nondisruptive and takes approximately two hours to complete.

  1. Verifying storage connectivity
    Before replacing bridges, you should verify bridge and storage connectivity. Familiarizing yourself with the command output enables you to subsequently confirm connectivity after making configuration changes.
  2. Hot-swapping FibreBridge 6500N bridges to create a pair of FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges
    To hot-swap one or two FibreBridge 6500N bridges to create a configuration with a pair of FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges, you must replace the bridges one at a time and follow the correct cabling procedure. The new cabling is different from the original cabling.
  3. Cabling the bridge SAS ports when consolidating storage behind FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges
    When consolidating multiple SAS storage stacks behind a single pair of FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges with available SAS ports, you must move the top and bottom SAS cables to the new bridges.
  4. Updating zoning when adding FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges to a configuration
    The zoning must be changed when you are replacing FibreBridge 6500N bridges with FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges and using both FC ports on the FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges. The required changes depend on whether you are running a version of ONTAP earlier than 9.1 or 9.1 and later.
  5. Cabling the second bridge FC port when adding FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridges to a configuration
    To provide multiple paths to the storage stacks, you can cable the second FC port on each FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridge when you have added the FibreBridge 7600N or 7500N bridge to your configuration.
  6. Disabling unused SAS ports on the FC-to-SAS bridges
    After making cabling changes to the bridge, you should disable any unused SAS ports on FC-to-SAS bridges to avoid health monitor alerts related to the unused ports.
Parent topic: Performing FC-to-SAS bridge maintenance
Related tasks
Copyright © 1994-2020, NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved.
Part number: 215-09065_2020-12_en-us
December 2020
Updated for ONTAP 9.8