Specifications
DATA CENTER BEST PRACTICES
SAN Design and Best Practices 82 of 84
APPENDIX D: TERMINOLOGY
Term Brief Description
Base switch Base switch of an enabled virtual fabric mode switch
ClearLink
Diagnostics
Diagnostics tool that allows users to automate a battery of tests to verify the integrity of
all 16 Gbps transceivers in the fabric
Default switch Default switch of an enabled virtual fabric mode switch
E_Port A standard Fibre Channel mechanism that enables switches to network with each other
Edge Hold Time Enables the switch to time out frames for F_Ports sooner than for E_Ports
EX_Port A type of E_Port that connects a Fibre Channel router to an edge fabric
F_Port A fabric port to which an N_Port is attached
FCIP Fibre Channel over IP, which enables Fibre Channel trafc to ow over an IP link
FCR Fibre Channel Routing, which enables multiple fabrics to share devices without having to
merge the fabrics
IFL Inter-Fabric Link, a link between fabrics in a routed topology
ISL Inter-Switch Link, used for connecting xed port and modular switches
Logical Switch Logical Switch of an enabled virtual fabric mode switch
Oversubscription A condition in which more devices might need to access a resource than that resource
can fully support
Port group A set of sequential ports that are dened (for example, ports 0–3)
QoS Quality of Service trafc shaping feature that allows the prioritization of data trafc
based on the SID/DID of each frame
Redundant Duplication of components, including an entire fabric, to avoid a single point of failure in
the network (fabrics A & B are identical)
Resilient Ability of a fabric to recover from failure, could be in a degraded state but functional (for
example, ISL failure in a trunk group)
TI Zone Trafc Isolation Zone, which controls the ow of interswitch trafc by creating a dedicated
path for trafc owing from a specic set of source ports
Trunk Trunking that allows a group of ISLs to merge into a single logical link, enabling trafc to
be distributed dynamically at the frame level
UltraScale ICL UltraScale Inter-Chassis Link, used for connecting modular switches without using front-
end device ports
VC Virtual channels, which create multiple logical data paths across a single physical link or
connection
VF Virtual fabrics, a suite of related features that enable customers to create a Logical
Switch, a Logical Fabric, or share devices in a Brocade Fibre Channel SAN