Data Center Fabric Manager Professional User Manual v10.3.X (53-1001355-01, November 2009)

54 DCFM Professional User Manual
53-1001355-01
Seed switch failover
2
Seed switch requirements
Depending on your environment, you must meet the following hardware and firmware version
requirements for seed switches.
Fabric OS devices:
• For Fabric OS only fabrics, the seed switch must be running Fabric OS 5.0 or later.
• For mixed fabrics (Fabric OS and M-EOS), the seed switch must be running Fabric OS 6.0 or
later.
For a complete list of all supported Fabric OS hardware, refer to “Supported hardware and
software” on page xx.
Seed switch failover
The Management application collects fabric-wide data (such as, fabric membership, connectivity,
name server information, zoning, and so on) using the seed switch. Therefore when a seed switch
becomes unreachable or there is no valid seed switch, the fabric becomes unmanageable.
When the seed switch cannot be reached for three consecutive fabric refresh cycles, the
Management application looks for another valid seed switch in the fabric, verifies that it can be
reached, and has valid credentials. If the seed switch meets this criteria, the Management
application automatically fails over to the recommended seed switch.
Note that it is possible that auto-failover may occur to a seed switch not running the latest firmware
version. In this instance, any functionality which has a direct dependency on the firmware version
of the seed switch is affected and restricted by the failover seed switch capabilities.
Changing the seed switch
When you change the seed switch for a fabric, the Management application performs the following
checks in the order they are listed:
• Identifies all switches and removes those running unsupported firmware version.
• Identifies which of the remaining switches are running the latest firmware versions.
• Filters out those switches that are not reachable.
• Identifies which switches are Virtual Fabric-enabled switches (Fabric OS only).
If there are Virtual Fabric-enabled switches, the Management application only uses these
switches as recommended seed switches. If there are no Virtual Fabric-enabled switches,
continue with the next check.
• Identifies which switches are Virtual Fabric-capable devices (Fabric OS only).
If there are Virtual Fabric-capable switches, the Management application only uses these
switches as recommended seed switches. If there are no Virtual Fabric-capable switches, the
Management application uses the list from the second check.