I started a new job as a systems engineer not too long ago and am looking for a way to get comfortable with FOS as I’ve never had to manage FC switches before. Anyone know of a way to emulate it, or should I just resign myself to buying an old switch on ebay and throwing it in the rack?
The Brocade documentation is pretty good. Which switches do you have? You can use the web gui to do a lot of the administration. If you have older ones, you may have to install an older version of Java Web Start or Open WebStart.
You could probably pick up an old Brocade 300 for cheap.
My problem with FC switches is that you mostly set it and forget it, but then something happens and you have to re-remember the syntax; usually because something broke.
We’ve got a few different models; I can use the GUI and for sure the java gui problem is a nice CLI perk, but mostly I just find the CLI to be cleaner; I can throw the commands in my change request and then it can be referred to in the case of an issue or a similar change (it’s a lot faster too which is nice). Didn’t know if anyone knew about using GNS3 for it or something.
