Brocade Fabric OS Administrator's Guide - Supporting Fabric OS v7.0.1 (53-1002446-01, March 2012)

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 211
53-1002446-01
Chapter
10
Managing Virtual Fabrics
In this chapter
Virtual Fabrics overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Logical switch overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Logical fabric overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Management model for logical switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Account management and Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Supported platforms for Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Limitations and restrictions of Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Enabling Virtual Fabrics mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Disabling Virtual Fabrics mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Configuring logical switches to use basic configuration values . . . . . . . . . 227
Creating a logical switch or base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Executing a command in a different logical switch context . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Deleting a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Adding and moving ports on a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Displaying logical switch configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Changing the fabric ID of a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Changing a logical switch to a base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Setting up IP addresses for a Virtual Fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Removing an IP address for a Virtual Fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Configuring a logical switch to use XISLs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Changing the context to a different logical fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Creating a logical fabric using XISLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Virtual Fabrics overview
Virtual Fabrics is an architecture to virtualize hardware boundaries. Traditionally, SAN design and
management is done at the granularity of a physical switch. Virtual Fabrics allows SAN design and
management to be done at the granularity of a port.
Virtual Fabrics is a suite of related features that can be customized based on your needs. The
Virtual Fabrics suite consists of the following specific features:
Logical switch
Logical fabric
Device sharing