Anyone got recent info on private FC-AL loops on recent FC switches?

Hello everyone,

I have a small lab setup with a single FC hub (Vixel, 8*1Gbps) where a few 
hosts (SUN and x86) talk to a few FC JBOD's (Sun MultiPack-FC JBOD's).
Although all of the HBA cards can 'talk fabric', I know that my JBOD's 
aren't fabric-aware (they must run in FC-AL mode, aka private-loop). This 
is not a problem as all I have is a single FC hub..

I'm considering the purchase of a 'Qlogic SANbox Express 1400' to replace 
this aging/noisy FC hub but even after reading the docs, I have no idea if 
I'll be able to run this kind of Switch in 'private loop mode'. Does 
anyone have any experience with such a setup (Qlogic switches) and with 
older non fabric-aware JBOD's?

I also considered a Brocade switch some time ago but it appeared that the 
Brocade 'QuickLoop' "payware" feature was required to run this setup 
(moreover the last version of FabricOS to support 'QuickLoop' was FabricOS 
3.x whereas current switches run FabricOS 4.x).

Here's how one of the FC JBOD's looks from a RHEL3 host connected to the 
FC hub:

# cat /proc/scsi/qla2300/2 cd
[......]
scsi-qla0-target-0=21000011c6510c41;
scsi-qla0-target-1=21000011c6510fdf;
scsi-qla0-target-2=21000011c6510dc4;
scsi-qla0-target-3=21000011c64ef9e3;
scsi-qla0-target-4=21000011c64ef913;
scsi-qla0-target-5=21000011c65123c0;
[.....]

Any advice welcomed... :)

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