Users Guide

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FC Flex IO Modules
This part provides a generic, broad-level description of the operations, capabilities, and conguration commands of the Fiber Channel
(FC) Flex IO module.
FC Flex IO Modules
This part provides a generic, broad-level description of the operations, capabilities, and conguration commands of the Fiber Channel
(FC) Flex IO module.
Understanding and Working of the FC Flex IO Modules
This chapter provides a generic, broad-level description of the operations and functionality of the Fiber Channel (FC) Flex IO module,
and contains the following sections:
• FC Flex IO Modules Overview
• FC Flex IO Module Capabilities and Operations
• Guidelines for Working with FC Flex IO Modules
• Processing of Data Trac
• Installing and Conguring the Switch
• Interconnectivity of FC Flex IO Modules with Cisco MDS Switches
FC Flex IO Modules Overview
The Fibre Channel (FC) Flex IO module is supported on I/O Aggregator (IOA). The IOA switch installed with the FC Flex IO module
functions as a top-of-rack edge switch that supports converged enhanced Ethernet (CEE) trac — Fibre Channel over Ethernet
(FCoE) for storage, Interprocess Communication (IPC) for servers, and Ethernet local area network (LAN) (IP cloud) for data — as
well as FC links to one or more storage area network (SAN) fabrics. Although the IOA can act as a FIP snooping bridge (FSB) to
provide FCoE transit switch capabilities, the salient and signicant advantage of deploying the FC Flex IO module is to enable more
streamlined and cohesive FCoE N-port identier virtualization (NPIV) proxy gateway functionalities. The NPIV proxy gateway (NPG)
provides FCoE-FC bridging behavior.
The FC Flex IO module oers a rich, comprehensive set of FCoE functionalities on the M1000e chassis by splitting the Ethernet and
Fibre Channel (FC) trac at the edge of the chassis. The FC switches that are connected directly to the FC Flex IO module provide
Fibre Channel capabilities because the FC Flex IO module does not support full fabric functionalities. With the separation of Ethernet
and FC packets performed at the edge of the chassis itself, you can use the IOA that contains an FC Flex IO module to connect to a
SAN environment without the need for a separate ToR switch to operate as NPIV proxy gateways. The IOA can function in NPIV
proxy gateway mode when an FC Flex IO module is present or in the FIP snooping bridge (FSB) mode when all the ports are
Ethernet ports.
The FC Flex IO module uses the same baseboard hardware of the IOA and the M1000e chassis. You can insert the FC Flex IO
module into any of the optional module slots of the IOA and it provides four FC ports per module. If you insert only one FC Flex IO
module, four ports are supported; if you insert two FC Flex IO modules, eight ports are supported.
By installing an FC Flex IO module, you can enable the IOA to directly connect to an existing FC SAN network. The FC Flex IO
module uses the existing slots on the IOA and provides four or eight FC ports up to speed of 8 GbE per second. You can connect all
of the FC ports to the same FC SAN fabric to yield FC bandwidth of up to 64GB. It is possible to connect some of the ports to a
dierent FC SAN fabric to provide access to multiple fabric devices.
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FC Flex IO Modules