The default IP address for a brand new Brocade switch is 10.77.77.77.  The netmask is 255.255.255.0.

Imagine you are about to configure a brand new Brocade switch.  You get the switch out of its box, rack it, then attempt to connect to the switch using the cable that shipped with the switch (shown in the plastic bag on the left in the picture below).  That cable has an RJ-45 Ethernet adapter on one end and a female DB9 serial connection on the other.

The RJ-45 connection is meant to go into the Brocade RJ-45 serial port on the left in the picture below.

The DB9 connector on the cable is meant to connect to your computer.

Last week I was at a client site trying to connect to a Brocade switch using the cable that shipped with the switch.  I thought I was prepared to do so.  My laptop didn’t have a DB9 serial connection, so I brought a DB9-to-USB converter so I could connect to the switch through one of my laptop’s USB ports.  It didn’t work.

After some initial panic, I borrowed a crossover ethernet cable from the client.  I connected one end of the cable to the 10/100 Mbps Ethernet (RJ-45) port on the switch (that port is the one on the right side of the picture above).  The default IP address of the port is 10.77.77.77 and the netmask is 255.255.255.0.

I then connected the other side to the ethernet port of my laptop and configured my laptop’s ethernet adapter to have an IP address of 10.77.77.50 with a 255.0.0.0 netmask.  The correct netmask was actually 255.255.255.0, but despite my little error, I was able to connect successfully (see below).

I opened a terminal window (command window in Windows) and pinged 10.77.77.77.  It replied (Yes!).

I then used a putty client (downloadable from putty.org) to ssh to the 10.77.77.77 address.  When prompted for a username/password, I used the default username and password for a Brocade switch, which are ‘admin’ and ‘password’.

If you ever need to connect to a new Brocade switch through its ethernet port, just follow the steps above (minus the incorrect netmask).  You should be able to connect with no problem.

Do you attend storage conferences?  These conferences can keep the attendee abreast of storage trends and where the industry is going.  Also, they can be great networking opportunities.  Here are a couple that I am considering:

* 31^st International Conference on Massive Storage Systems and Technology (MSST 2015) — http://storageconference.us.  This conference will be held from May 30 – June 5, 2015 at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, CA.  The conference title this year is “Media Wars: Disk versus FLASH in the Struggle for Capacity and Performance”.  By the title, it looks like this event is going to be pretty awesome!

* The Flash Memory Summit — http://www.flashmemorysummit.com.  This conference takes place on August 11 – 13, 2015 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.  The website summarizes the conference thusly: “The Flash Memory Summit is the only place where you will hear the people making these products happen! Network with companies and people that will create the next generation of hardware and software at the Flash Memory Summit.”

Are you considering either of these or any others?  Let me know.

Do you know of a company that has switched from one storage platform to another?  Perhaps you work for a company that has made this type of move.  There are many challenges involved in such a move.  Those challenges include, but are not limited to ensuring the new hardware will perform adequately (sizing it correctly), getting the data safely from the old storage systems to the new, and training staff and/or hiring new staff.  This post will cover another challenge that may surface when switching storage vendors — employee attitudes.

We humans are creatures of habit.  When a person establishes a certain routine, whether it’s a morning routine after waking, a certain route taken to work, or a daily routine while at work, those routines become part of the person’s “comfort zone”.  Therefore, when something is introduced that changes one of those routines, sometimes that change will cause discomfort to the person affected by the change.  In this way, the introduction of storage systems from a new vendor and elimination of the systems from an established vendor may cause angst among those that work directly with those systems.

In addition to being creatures of habit, humans often form strong opinions for or against entities they are directly or indirectly involved in.  For example, I worked at a client site where I met a guy that loved Alabama Crimson Tide football.  All was going well with this client until I brought up Auburn. Upon hearing the word “Auburn” his face flushed red with anger and his eyes narrowed in disgust as he relayed to me that, “Those Auburn fans are the worst around!”  He had strong opinions for Alabama and against Auburn.

The same type of devotion can occur with users of computer and storage equipment.  Back in the late 90s, I was a systems engineer.  I worked with Sun Microsystems’ hardware.  I loved Sun, and as a lover of Sun, naturally I hated Microsoft.  I did then, and to an extent, I still do…  That’s why I’m typing this post on a Mac.  Anyway, I digress.  Users of storage often develop a devotion to a particular storage vendor.  When the user’s company decides to supplant that user’s “love” (the existing storage platform) with some foreign (to the user) system, there can be strong feelings that result (much like the Alabama fan had when I mentioned Auburn).

These attitudes, although undesirable to management, are natural.  How can these natural human attitudes be overcome?  One possible method is by including those that work with the hardware in the decision making process.  How?  By allowing them to voice their opinions while decisions are being made.  This will give them a feeling that what they say is being heard and valued by management.  Take time to hear and answer their questions and concerns.  It will likely be necessary to exert energy to prevent the decision making process from getting bogged down, but that extra energy expenditure could pay off at the end of the process with appreciative employees and a successful implementation of the new storage systems.

While going through the decision making process, if at the end of the process management’s opinion differs from that of the employees, then a meeting with the employees to tell of the decision and the rationale behind it will be appreciated.  In the workplace, most everyone desires to be addressed as an adult.  Adult employees can handle and accept their opinion losing out to the opinion of their boss, if the boss demonstrates that he/she values the opinions of the employees, has listened to their opinions and truly considered them, then after thoughtful consideration decided to go in a different direction.

If these actions are taken by the decision makers, it will increase the chances that once the new vendor’s hardware hits the data center floor, the employees that work hands on with that equipment will be ready and willing to make that equipment an accepted part of their daily routine, a new part of their comfort zone, and the centerpiece of a successful project for the company they work for.

Roughly a month ago, Hitachi announced a new line of mid-range storage, i.e. the G200, G400, and G600 (there will be a G800 at some point in the future as well).  These storage systems are derived from Hitachi’s G1000, which is the company’s flagship system.  These new systems, which I’ll refer to for the remainder of this post as the Gx00 arrays, will replace the Hitachi’s HUS100 family of arrays.  The new systems provide a noteworthy bump up in performance capability over their predecessors, a very nice set of software features/functionalities, and an operating system (OS) that is common across the Gx00 arrays and the G1000.  It is on that last feature — the common OS — that this post will focus on.

Having an OS, microcode, and software capabilities that are common from the enterprise storage system down through the modular line of storage systems is a novel (for storage vendors that offer monolithic and modular storage systems) and beneficial idea.  How?  From an administrative perspective, the common OS will make administering the Hitachi storage systems more straightforward.  Once a storage administrator knows the software on one system, that admin will be able to find his way around on any of the Gx00 or G1000 systems, and administrators will like this.  In the words of one of my storage admin friends after he had heard of the common OS across the Gx00 line of storage, “This is a game changer!  It’s awesome!”

For companies that have both modular and enterprise Hitachi storage systems (which is the case with many, if not most, enterprise customers), this means that those companies’ storage administrators will spend less time learning, getting trained on, and fumbling around on different software interfaces, and more time doing productive work.  Of course, more productive time on the job ultimately means more profit for the company.

There will be more to come on the Gx00 Hitachi systems.