.SAN design reference guide Vol. 1-5 785350-001

Figure 58 HP Virtual Connect Fibre Channel configuration
N_Ports (NPIV) (uplinks)
Blade
enclosure
with
16 servers
Server Bay 1 Server Bay 2
Server Bay 3
Server Bay 4
Server Bay 5
Server Bay 6
Server Bay 7 Server Bay 8 Server Bay 9
Server Bay 10 Server Bay 11
Server Bay 12
Server Bay 13 Server Bay 14 Server Bay 15 Server Bay 16
VC-FC Module- VC-FC Module-
Blade enclosure/
Server management
SAN/
Storage management
25271f
FC Fabric (B-series,
C-series, and H-series)
(with NPIV F_Port support)
FC Fabric (B-series,
C-series, and H-series)
(with NPIV F_Port support)
BladeSystem with Brocade Access Gateway mode
AG mode is a software-enabled feature available with the Brocade 8Gb SAN Switch for HP
BladeSystem c-Class with Fabric OS 5.2.1b (or later). AG mode does not require the purchase of
additional hardware or software.
Blade switches in AG mode function as port aggregators using NPIV to connect to NPIV-compliant
Fibre Channel switches (including other vendor switches). The blade switches are logically
transparent to the hosts and fabric—they no longer function as standard switches.
The Brocade 8Gb SAN Switch for HP BladeSystem c-Class and the Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch for
HP c-Class BladeSystems in AG mode supports a maximum of 24 ports:
• Maximum of 16 ports for back-end connections to blade server
• Maximum of 8 external ports used as uplink N_Ports
AG mode features include:
• The 8 external ports function as N_Ports, supporting NPIV. They connect to standard switches
that support NPIV-compliant F_Ports.
• AG mode does not use a domain ID, preventing domain-count limits in large fabrics.
• AG mode uses port mapping between the host-facing ports (virtual F_Ports) and the external
uplink ports (N_Ports). The default mapping is 2:1 ports, which you can reconfigure as needed.
Figure 59 (page 171) shows a view of an HP c-Class BladeSystem in AG mode.
170 Heterogeneous server rules