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

466 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide

53-1002148-02

Fibre Channel routing concepts

If two different backbone fabrics are connected to the same edge fabric, the backbone fabric

IDs must be different, but the edge fabric IDs must be the same. If you configure the same

fabric ID for two backbone fabrics that are connected to the same edge fabric, a RASLog

message displays a warning about fabric ID overlap.

NOTE

Backbone fabrics that share connections to the same edge fabrics must have unique

backbone fabric IDs.

• MetaSAN

A metaSAN is the collection of all SANs interconnected with Fibre Channel routers.

A simple metaSAN can be constructed using an FC router to connect two or more separate

fabrics. Additional FC routers can be used to increase the available bandwidth between fabrics

and to provide redundancy.

Figure 76 shows a metaSAN consisting of a host in Edge SAN 1 connected to storage in Edge

SAN 2 through a backbone fabric connecting two FC routers.

FIGURE 76 Edge SANs connected through a backbone fabric

• Phantom domains

A phantom domain is a domain emulated by the Fibre Channel router. The FC router can

emulate two types of phantom domains: front phantom domains and translate phantom

domains. For detailed information about phantom domains, see “Phantom domains” on

page 468.

= LSAN

Edge SAN 2Edge SAN 1

Backbone

fabric

FC router FC router

E_Port

IFL IFL

EX_Port

ISL