Specifications

DATA CENTER BEST PRACTICES
SAN Design and Best Practices 14 of 84
on each core blade must reside within the same ICL trunk boundary on the core blades. If more than four ICL
connections are required between a pair of Brocade DCX 8510 chassis, additional ICL connections should be
added in pairs (one on each core blade).
fig07_SAN_Design
Domain 1
Brocade
DCX 8510-8
Domain 2
Brocade
DCX 8510-8
UltraScale ICL Trunk Boundary
Trunked UltraScale ICLs
Figure 7. Minimum connections needed between Brocade DCX 8510 chassis.
Brocade DCX 8510 UltraScale ICL Connection Best Practice
Each core blade in a chassis must be connected to each of the two core blades in the destination chassis to
achieve full redundancy. (Note: For redundancy, use at least one pair of links between 2 core blades.)
Mesh Topology
A mesh design provides a single hop between source and destination, and initial Brocade FOS v7.0 release
supports a 3 chassis mesh design (same as existing 8 Gb platform) with 15/25/50 meter distance. Brocade
FOS v7.1 provides support for 100 meters with select QSFPs and OM4 ber. In the conguration shown in
Figure 8, up to 1152 16 Gbps ports are supported using UltraScale ICLs with a 12:1 oversubscription. As more
UltraScale ICLs are added, oversubscription can be reduced to 3:1.
fig08_SAN_Design
Domain 2
Brocade
DCX 8510-8
Domain 1
Brocade
DCX 8510-8
Domain 3
Brocade
DCX 8510-8
Figure 8. UltraScale ICL-based full-mesh topology.
NOTE: Refer to the Hyper-Scale Fabrics: Scale-out Architecture with Brocade DCX 8510 Feature Brief for details.
UltraScale ICL connections are considered a “hop of no concern” in a FICON fabric.