Specifications

DATA CENTER BEST PRACTICES
SAN Design and Best Practices 50 of 84
fig36_SAN_Design
Brocade
FICON Director
LS 50 VE12
LS 60 VE22
LS
128
IP Core A
gateway
IP Core B
gateway
xge1 10 GbE connection
xge0 10 GbE connection
Figure 36. Two Virtual Fabric Logical Switches deployed on a Brocade FICON Director
Figure 37 shows in more detail the anatomy of the circuits from the VE_Ports in each LS. The iproute that is
congured has the destination subnet/mask and associates that destination with a local gateway on the IP core
router. In this example, each circuit requires its own iproute:
•Red IP core router A GW
•Red IP core router B GW cross-port
•Blue IP core router A GW cross-port
•Blue IP core router B GW
fig37_SAN_Design
LS 50 VE12
LS 60 VE22
Logical switches
Default switch LS
IP core router A GW
IP core router B GW
LS
128
xge1 (native VE_Ports 12-21)
Physical 10 GbE connection
Physical 10 GbE connection
xge0 (native VE_Ports 22-31)
VE_Port
ipif
cross-ipif
cross-circuit
cross-xge port
cross-iproute for red
iproute for blue
Figure 37. Detailed view of Logical Switch VE_Ports
What is Not Supported?
There are a few features that are not supported by Brocade:
•Cisco E_Port (ISL) interoperability is not supported by Brocade, and Brocade does not support any OEM that
supports Cisco interoperability.
•VE_Ports or VEX_Ports that “lay in wait” are not supported for FICON, tape, and protocol optimizations. The
concept here is that by manually adjusting the FSPF cost, you can provide a backup VE_Port upon an active
VE_Port going ofine. This may possibly be the case if there are two FX blades and one is taken ofine. The
problem is that there is considerable state information involved with FICON, tape, and protocol optimization
processes that cannot be recovered from by merely bringing up a new VE_Port. These processes have to
be restarted.