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

32 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide

53-1001336-02

Blade terminology and compatibility

Mixed CP blades are not supported on a single chassis, except during specific upgrade procedures

detailed in the Brocade 48000 Hardware Reference Manual. CP4 and CP8 blades cannot be

mixed in the same chassis under any circumstances. Brocade recommends that each Brocade

platform have only one type of CP blade installed and that each CP (primary and secondary

partition) maintains the same firmware version.

For more information on maintaining firmware in your enterprise-class platform, refer to Chapter 9,

“Installing and Maintaining Firmware”.

Core blades

Core blades provide intra-chassis switching and ICL connectivity between DCX platforms. The

Brocade DCX supports two CORE8 core blades. The Brocade DCX-4S supports two CR4S-8 core

blades. This blade is not interchangeable or hot-swappable with the Brocade DCX core blades. If

you try to interchange the blades they become faulty.

The Brocade 48000 does not support core blades.

Port and application blade compatibility

Table 4 identifies which port and application blades are supported for each Brocade platform.

TABLE 4 Port blades supported by each platform

Port blades Brocade 48000 (CP4) Brocade DCX and DCX-4S

FC4-16 Supported Unsupported

FC4-32 Supported Unsupported

FC4-48 Supported Unsupported

FC8-16 Supported Supported

FC8-32 Supported Supported

FC8-48 Supported Supported

FC10-6 Supported Supported

FC4-16IP Supported Unsupported

FA4-18 Supported Supported

FR4-18i Supported Supported

FS8-18 Unsupported Supported

FCOE10-24

1. During power up when an FCOE10-24 is detected first before any other AP blade

in a chassis with Fabric OS v6.3.0, that all other AP blades will be faulted (this is a

v6.3.0 limitation only). If a non-FCOE10-24 blade is detected first, then any

subsequently-detected FCOE10-24 blades will be faulted. Blades are powered up

starting with slot 1.

Unsupported Supported

FX8-24 Unsupported Supported