Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v7.0.0 (53-1002148-02, June 2011)

68 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide
53-1002148-02
Inter-chassis links
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Example of enabling a gateway link on slot 2, port 3
ecp:admin> portcfgislmode 2/3, 1
Committing configuration...done.
ISL R_RDY Mode is enabled for port 3. Please make sure the PID
formats are consistent across the entire fabric.
Inter-chassis links
An inter-chassis link (ICL) is a licensed feature used to interconnect two Brocade DCX Backbones,
two Brocade DCX-4S Backbones, or a Brocade DCX and a Brocade DCX-4S Backbone. ICL ports in
the core blades are used to interconnect two Brocade Backbones, potentially increasing the
number of usable ports in the Brocade DCX or DCX-4S chassis. The ICL ports on CORE8 and
CR4S-8 blades are internally managed as E_Ports. These ports use proprietary connectors instead
of traditional small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceivers. When two Brocade Backbones are
interconnected by ICLs, each chassis requires a unique domain and is managed as a separate
switch.
On the Brocade DCX, there are two ICL connectors at ports ICL0 and ICL1 on each core blade, each
aggregating a set of 16 ports. Thus, each core blade provides 32 ICL ports and there are 64 ICL
ports available for the entire Brocade DCX chassis. All the ICL connector ports must be connected
to the same two Brocade DCX or DCX-4S chassis.
The Brocade DCX-4S has two ICL connector ports at ICL0 and ICL1, each aggregating a set of 8
ports. Thus, each core blade provides 16 ICL ports and there are 32 ICL ports available for the
entire Brocade DCX-4S chassis. All the ICL connector ports must be connected to the same two
Brocade DCX or DCX-4S chassis.
Only the following cross-ICL group connections are allowed, as illustrated in Figure 10:
• The ICL0 ports on switch A is connected to the ICL1 ports on switch B.
• The ICL1 ports on switch A is connected to the ICL0 ports on switch B.
FIGURE 10 DCX-4S allowed ICL connections