HP B-series Fabric OS 6.3.2e Release Notes (5697-1816, March 2012) - includes all 6.3.2x versions

after the addition or deletion of the circuit. This allows the switch to adjust the internal routes
to fully utilize the new bandwidth.
• Switching modes between 10G and 1G is disruptive to FCIP traffic.
• Keep Alive Timeout (ms). The valid range is 500 ms to 7,200,000 ms (inclusive). The default
value is 10,000 ms (10 seconds). If FICON is configured, the recommended value is 1000
ms (1 second), otherwise the recommended value is the default of 10 seconds. For impairment
networks with 100 ms latency and 0.5% packet loss, Keep Alive Timeout should be configured
as 30 seconds. If the local and remote circuit configurations' Keep Alive Timeout values do
not match, the tunnel will use the lower of the two configured values.
• Software compression (available on the 1606 Extension SAN Switch) modes 2 and 3 are not
supported in FICON environments; they are supported only in Open Systems environments.
• Software compression (modes 2 and 3) generally gives a better compression ratio, but not
the throughput or bandwidth across all six GE ports. HP recommends software compression
for low-throughput links and supports throughput up to 2 Gb/s across all 6 GE ports.
• To perform the following operations you must delete the FCIP configuration on the affected
ports first:
◦ Switching modes between 1G/10G/Dual
◦ Moving VE/GE port between logical switches
• The DC SAN Director Multiprotocol Extension Blade supports three operating modes:
Mode 1: 10 1-GbE ports mode (default)◦
◦ Mode 2: 10 1-GbE ports and 1 10-GbE port
◦ Mode 3: 2 10-GbE ports
Modes 2 and 3 require the slot-based 10-GbE FCIP license.
• ARL (Adaptive Rate Limiting) is not supported on 10-Gb tunnels.
• IPv6, DiffServ, and In-band Management are not supported on the 1606 Extension SAN
Switch or DC SAN Director Multiprotocol Extension Blade .
• IPSec is not supported on the DC SAN Director Multiprotocol Extension Blade.
• Fabric OS 6.3 supports only up to four 1-Gb circuits per VE/FCIP tunnel for the 1-Gb interfaces.
A VE/FCIP tunnel created over 10-Gb interfaces will be limited to 10 circuits created using
IPIFs on the same 10-GbE port (and no more than 1 Gb per circuit).
• As a recommended best practice, the VE tunnel should not be oversubscribed (for example,
8-Gb FC traffic over 500 Mb/s tunnel). General guidelines are 2:1 subscription without
compression and 4:1 with compression.
• Nondisruptive firmware activation on Fabric OS 6.3 will disrupt I/O traffic on FCIP links.
• FCR (VEX) is not supported on the DC SAN Director Multiprotocol Extension Blade but is
supported on the 1606 Extension SAN Switch.
• Differences between the 1606 Extension SAN Switch/DC SAN Director Multiprotocol Extension
Blade platforms and previous-generation 7500/FR4-18i platforms include:
◦ On the 1606 Extension SAN Switch, the GigE port does not directly correlate to a VE_Port.
◦ On the DC SAN Director Multiprotocol Extension Blade, GigE ports 0-9 or 10-GbE port
1 (xge1) correspond to VE_Ports 12-21, and 10-GbE port 0 (xge0) corresponds to VE_Ports
22-31.
◦ The CLI syntax for the 1606 Extension SAN Switch/DC SAN Director Multiprotocol
Extension Blade varies from the 7500/FR4-18i. See the Brocade Fabric OS Command
Reference document for Fabric OS 6.3 for details.
Important notes and recommendations 23