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The question should not be whether it works or not, the question should be whether it is "certified" and "supported" by the SAN vendor you choose.
HP and IBM both use the same host bus adapters with their solutions, as they are usually rebranded adapters from one of the big three HBA vendors (Emulex, JNI, QLogic) But there are differences in timings, perhaps some OEM firmware versions and definitely in the drivers used by the host vendor.
The same story is true with the switches, since these are also rebranded versions of either McData or Brocade. The OEM versions sometimes have reduced feature sets. For instance, QuickLoop functions, or ISL trunking may not be included with different OEM versions of a particular switch. The best way to approach this is to make a decision on which vendor you will choose then, buy everything from that vendor. If you choose not to do this, then just make sure that what you do purchase is "supported" by each vendor. The support matrix constantly changes as new microcode and driver versions are introduced, so you may need to check this periodically as time moves forward and before you introduce new versions into your SAN.
Chris
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