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

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 213
53-1002148-02
Chapter
10
Managing Virtual Fabrics
In this chapter
•Virtual Fabrics overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
•Logical switch overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
•Logical fabric overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
•Management model for logical switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
•Account management and Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
•Supported platforms for Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
•Limitations and restrictions of Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
•Enabling Virtual Fabrics mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
•Disabling Virtual Fabrics mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
•Configuring logical switches to use basic configuration values . . . . . . . . . 229
•Creating a logical switch or base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
•Executing a command in a different logical switch context . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
•Deleting a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
•Adding and removing ports on a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
•Displaying logical switch configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
•Changing the fabric ID of a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
•Changing a logical switch to a base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
•Setting up IP addresses for a Virtual Fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
•Removing an IP address for a Virtual Fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
•Configuring a logical switch to use XISLs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
•Changing the context to a different logical fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
•Creating a logical fabric using XISLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
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