Brocade/Twinax/AFF200/FAS2750

[stuart_tormey]

Hope someone can point me in the right direction.

I have some brocade vdx6740 switches and currently it has fibre/transceivers implemented but due to cost  I want to swap to twinax. I'm planning on brocade active twinax cables to join the switches together. I am trying to find out about compatibility of using Brocade Twinax cables to connect to the NetApp AFF220 and FAS2750 units to the vdx6740 swotch. Does anyone have any information on this?

[SpindleNinja]

Are you planning on making these a 4 node cluster and using the brocade for a cluster switch?    Or is this just data access?  

[stuart_tormey]

Spindle Ninja,

Tthese would just be for data access only, the cluster interconnect will be switchless and connect directly to each other.

[SpindleNinja]

Was just wondering for clarfication.   But Alex has it down pretty good. 

Lastly have you been to the Hardware Universe?   https://hwu.netapp.com  

[AlexDawson · Accepted solution]

Hi there!

Unfortunately TwinAx is a giant mess, and we don't have too many options to fix it.

We only certify Cisco and NetApp branded TwinAx cables, and I know from personal experience that the VDX6740 does not support either of those.

While the Brocade TwinAx cables will work in many NetApp 10Gb adapters, it is not supported and is flagged as such.

This means - the supported option is to use optical.

Unsupported options include the twinax (DAC) cables with a different vendor ID on each end, otherwise known as dual coded DAC. Usually works fine, but not officially supported.