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

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 25
53-1001336-02
Ports
2
Ports
Because enterprise-class platforms contain interchangeable port blades, their procedures differ
from those for fixed-port switches. For example, fixed-port models identify ports only by the port
number, while enterprise-class platforms identify ports by slot/port notation.
NOTE
For detailed information about the Brocade 48000 director, and the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S
enterprise-class platforms, see the Brocade 48000 Hardware Reference Manual, the Brocade DCX
Data Center Backbone Hardware Reference Manual, and the Brocade DCX-4S Data Center
Backbone Hardware Reference Manual, respectively.
The different blades that can be inserted into a chassis are described as follows:
• Control processor blades (CPs) contain communication ports for system management, and are
used for low-level, platform-wide tasks. In the Brocade 48000, CPs are used for intra-platform
switching.
• Core blades in the Brocade DCX (CORE8) and DCX-4S (CR4S-8) are used for intra-chassis
switching as well as interconnecting two Brocade DCX enterprise-class platforms.
• Port blades are used for host, storage, and interswitch connections.
• AP blades are used for Fibre Channel Application Services and Routing Services, iSCSI
bridging, FCIP, Converged Enhanced Ethernet, storage virtualization, and encryption support.
NOTE
On each port blade, a particular port must be represented by both slot number and port number.
The Brocade 48000 has 10 slots that contain control processor, port, and application (AP) blades:
• Slot numbers 5 and 6 contain control processor blades.
• Slot numbers 1 through 4 and 7 through 10 contain port and AP blades.
The Brocade DCX has 12 slots that contain control processor, core, port, and AP blades:
• Slot numbers 6 and 7 contain CPs.
• Slot numbers 5 and 8 contain core blades.
• Slot numbers 1 through 4 and 9 through 12 contain port and AP blades.
The Brocade DCX-4S has 8 slots that contain control processor, core, port, and AP blades:
• Slot numbers 4 and 5 contain CPs.
• Slot numbers 3 and 6 contain core blades.
• Slot numbers 1 and 2, and 7 and 8 contain port and AP blades.
NOTE
The Core blades for the Brocade DCX (CORE8) and the Brocade DCX-4S (CR4S-8) are not
interchangeable between the two products.
When you have port blades with different port counts in the same director (for example, 16-port
blades and 32-port blades, or 16-port blades and 18-port blades with 16 FC ports and 2 GbE ports,
or 16-port and 48-port blades), the area IDs no longer match the port numbers. Table 2 lists the
port numbering schemes for the Brocade 48000, and the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S
enterprise-class platforms.