My Fibre Channel switch (an HP 16B née Brocade SilkWorm 3800) arrived a couple of days ago and it gave me a hard time. I've dealt with Brocades before but this thing was really whacky. Some ports worked, some ports didn't. Some ports were able to negotiate speeds, some weren't. I also couldn't connect to it via neither serial port, nor network.
After mucking with it for a day or so I finally bit the bullet and submitted my first support ticket ever!
HP support in Atlanta pointed me in the right direction. The switch needs a straight through cable and not a null modem. And obviously I hadn't gotten the right cable with the switch. USB dongle + gender bender and I was in business. So there you have it, Google, in case somebody else runs into this.
The reason the port routing and speed negotiation was funky was some really odd zoning rules. Fixed.
The second problem was my HP ds2405 fibre channel tray. It was one of the first 2 Gbps-capable arrays and like many other leading edge devices it has compatibility issues. Lots of googling (yes, friendly Google trademark lawyers, I am explicitly referring to your search engine) and looking through docs and no go. I ended up getting a firmware from a friend at HP but it didn't come with any instructions. So I had to experiment a bit. Procedure documented here for posterity:
So now I'm all set with Fibre Channel again. Time to muck a bit with tachyon in my copious spare time.
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