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

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 451
53-1001336-02
F_Port masterless trunking
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TABLE 87 F_Port masterless trunking considerations
Category Description
Area assignment You statically assign the area within the trunk group on the edge switch. That group
is the F_Port masterless trunk.
The static trunk area you assign must fall within the ASIC's trunk group of the
switch or blade starting from port 0.
The static trunk area you assign must be one of the port’s default areas of the
trunk group.
10-bit addressing is the default mode for all dynamically created partitions in the
Brocade DCX platform.
Authentication Authentication occurs only on the F_Port trunk master port and only once per the
entire trunk. This behavior is the same as E_Port trunk master authentication.
Because only one port in the trunk does FLOGI to the switch, and authentication
follows FLOGI on that port, only that port displays the authentication details when
you issue the portShow command.
Note: Switches in Access Gateway mode do not perform authentication.
Management Server Registered Node ID (RNID), Link Incident Record Registration (LIRR), and Query
Security Attribute (QSA) ELSs are not supported on F_Port trunks.
Trunk area The port must be disabled before assigning a Trunk Area on the edge switch to the
port or removing a Trunk Area from a trunk group.
You cannot assign a Trunk Area to ports if the standby CP is running a firmware
version earlier than Fabric OS v6.2.0.
PWWN The entire Trunk Area trunk group shares the same Port WWN within the trunk
group. The PWWN is the same across the F_Port trunk that has 0x2f or 0x25 as
the first byte of the PWWN. The TA is part of the PWWN in the format listed in
Table 86 on page 449.
Downgrade You can have trunking on, but you must disable the trunk ports before performing
a firmware downgrade.
Note: Removing a Trunk Area on ports running traffic is disruptive because you
must disable the port to disable the Trunk Area on the port. Use caution before
assigning a Trunk Area if you need to downgrade to a firmware version earlier than
Fabric OS v6.2.0.
Upgrade There are no limitations on upgrading to Fabric OS v6.3.0 if the F_Port is present
on the switch. Upgrading is not disruptive.
HA Sync If you plug in a standby CP with a firmware version earlier than Fabric OS v6.2.0
and a Trunk Area is present on the switch, the CP blades will become out of sync.
Port Types Only F_Port trunk ports are allowed on a Trunk Area port. All other port types are
persistently disabled.
Default Area Port X is a port that has its Default Area the same as its Trunk Area. The only time
you can remove port X from the trunk group is if the entire trunk group has the
Trunk Area disabled.
portCfgTrunkPort port, 0 The portCfgTrunkPort port, 0 command will fail if a Trunk Area is enabled on a port.
The port Trunk Area must be disabled first.
switchCfgTrunk 0 The switchCfgTrunk 0 command will fail if a port has TA enabled. All ports on a
switch must be TA-disabled first.