Security Solutions

ISSU In-Service Software Upgrade. A comprehensive transparent software upgrade capability for

network switches. IRF assisted ISSU will reboot one unit in the IRF system, wait for it to come back

online, then reboot another unit in the IRF system. When a unit is rebooting, it is really down, so

any host which is single-wire connected to this unit will be offline. The ISSU process assumes hosts

or peer devices are dual-connected to two different IRF members. When one switch reboots, it

will be the NIC teaming or Link-Aggregation of the peer device which will perform the failover

and use the other link.

When using more than two units in the IRF system, ISSU assumes the peer devices are connected

to all switches in the IRF system. For example, if you have a server IRF system with four switches,

the server is assumed to be connected to each of the four switches. This is highly unlikely, and

therefore in storage configurations, HP recommends two units in the IRF system for any deployment

which requires ISSU. When a customer can have a maintenance window and accepts downtime,

more than two switches in the IRF can be used. There are 3 versions of ISSU:

• Compatible: Two software versions can actively exist in the same IRF system. Procedure can

be done with issu CLI commands.

• Incompatible: Only one version can exist in the IRF system. Procedure can be done with

issu CLI commands.

• Unknown: Official ISSU update to and from that version is not possible. ISSU-like update is

possible with a manual procedure (not through issu CLI commands), using MAD assistance.

LACP Link Aggregation Control Protocol. A protocol within the IEEE specification that provides a method

to control the bundling of several physical ports together to form a single logical channel. LACP

allows a network device to negotiate an automatic bundling of links by sending LACP packets to

the peer (directly connected device that also implements LACP).

LUN Logical Unit Number. A number used to identify a logical unit, which is a device addressed by

the SCSI protocol or protocols that encapsulate SCSI, such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI Channel.

A LUN may be used with any device which supports read/write operations, such as a tape drive,

but is most often used to refer to a logical disk as created on a SAN.

MPIO Multipath I/O. A facility for a host to direct I/O requests to a storage device on more than

one access path. This requires that devices be uniquely identifiable by some means other than

bus address.

N_Port Node Port. Ports that are located on the server or storage ports. These ports connect directly to

F_Ports.

NP_Port N_Port Virtulization Port. These ports connect to F_Ports and act as a proxy for other N_Ports

located on the NPV-enabled switch. Essentially, the NP_Port is able to present multiple pWWNs

to the fabric over a single physical port.

NPIV N_Port ID Virtualization. An industry-standard protocol.

NPV N_Port Virtualization. A switch-based technology designed to reduce switch management and

overhead in larger SAN deployments. NPV introduces a type of Fibre Channel port, the NP_Port.

The NP_Port connects to an F_Port and acts as a proxy for other N_Ports on the NPV-enabled

switch. Essentially, the NP_Port looks like an NPIV-enabled host to the F_Port on the other end.

An NPV-enabled switch will register additional WWPNs (and receive additional N_Port_IDs)

through NPIV on behalf of the N_Ports connected to it. The physical N_Ports do not have any

knowledge this is occurring and do not need any support for it. It is all handled by the NPV-enabled

switch.