Re-Balancing The Encryption Engine - Brocade Communications Systems Brocade 8/12c User Manual

Re-balancing the encryption engine

If you are currently using encryption and running Fabric OS 6.3.x or earlier, you are hosting tape
and disk target containers on different encryption switches or blades. Beginning with Fabric
OS 6.4, disk and tape target containers can be hosted on the same switch or blade. Hosting both
disk and tape target containers on the same switch or blade might result in a drop in throughput,
but it can reduce cost by reducing the number of switches or blades needed to support encrypted
I/O in environments that use both disk and tape.
The throughput drop can be mitigated by re-balancing the tape and disk target containers across
the encryption engine. This ensures that the tape and disk target containers are distributed within
the encryption engine for maximum throughput.
All nodes within an encryption group must be upgraded to Fabric OS 6.4 or later to support hosting
disk and tape target containers on the same encryption engine. If any node within an encryption
group is running an earlier release, disk and tape containers must continue to be hosted on
separate encryption engines.
During re-balancing operations, be aware of the following:
•
•
To determine if re-balancing is recommended for an encryption engine, check the encryption
engine properties. Beginning with Fabric OS 6.4, a field is added that indicates whether or not
re-balancing is recommended.
You might be prompted to re-balance during the following operations:
•
•
•
•
To re-balance an encryption engine, complete the following steps:
1. Select Configure > Encryption from the menu task bar.
2. Select an engine, then select Engine > Re-Balance from the menu task bar, or right click an
3. Click Yes to begin re-balancing.
Brocade Network Advisor SAN User Manual
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You might notice a slight disruption in Disk I/O. In some cases, manual intervention may be
needed.
Backup jobs to tapes might need to be restarted after re-balancing is completed.
When adding a new disk or tape target container.
When removing an existing disk or tape target container.
After failover to a backup encryption engine in an HA cluster.
After a failed encryption engine in an HA cluster is recovered, and failback processing has
occurred.
The Encryption Center dialog box displays
engine and select Re-Balance.
A warning message displays, noting the potential disruption of disk and tape I/O, and that the
operation may take several minutes.
Re-balancing the encryption engine
(Figure 153).
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