Brocade Fabric OS Administrator's Guide Supporting Fabric OS v6.3.0 (53-1001336-02, November 2009)

448 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide
53-1001336-02
F_Port trunking
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• Keep in mind that F_Port trunking does not support shared area ports on the FC8-48 and
FC4-48 blades in the Brocade 48000. F_Port trunking is supported in the shared area ports on
the FC8-48 in the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S.
Enabling F_Port trunking
1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account assigned to the admin role.
2. Enter the portTrunkArea
--enable command.
switch:admin> porttrunkarea --enable 36-39
ERROR: port 36 has to be disabled
Disabling F_Port trunking
1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account assigned to the admin role.
2. Enter the portTrunkArea
--disable command.
This command does not unassign a TA if its previously assigned Area_ID is the same address
identifier (Area_ID) of the TA unless all the ports in the trunk group are specified to be
unassigned.
switch:admin> porttrunkarea --disable 36-39
ERROR: port 36 has to be disabled
3. Disable each port prior to removing ports from the TA. Then reissue the command:
switch:admin> porttrunkarea --disable 36-39
Trunk area 37 disabled for ports 36, 37, 38 and 39.
F_Port Trunking in Virtual Fabrics
F_Port trunking functionality performs the same in Virtual Fabrics as it does in non-virtual fabric
platforms except for the Brocade DCX. Fabric OS v6.2.0 uses a 10-bit addressing model, which is
the default mode for all dynamically created logical switches in the DCX platform.
In the DCX platform, F_Port trunk ports dynamically receive an 8-bit area address that remains
persistent. After F_Port trunking configurations are removed from a port in a logical switch, that
port returns to the default 10-bit area address model, which supports up to 1024 F_Ports in a
logical switch.
NOTE
Because the DCX platform has a maximum of 448 ports, out of the 1024 10-bit address range,
addresses 576-1023 are reserved for the 10-bit address space. Addresses 0–575 are reserved for
assigning to NPIV/Loop ports to support 144 [576/4] NPIV/Loop ports in a logical switch with 256
devices each.
The DCX-4S supports trunk groups with up to eight ports. The trunking groups are based on the
user port number with contiguous eight ports as one group, for example 0-7, 8-15, and 16-23.
F_Port trunking considerations for Virtual Fabrics
Following are the F_Port trunking considerations for virtual fabrics: