Administrator's Guide v4.1.1 Manual

Introduction to Network OS and Brocade VCS Fabric
Technology
● Introduction to Brocade Network OS...............................................................................27
● Introduction to Brocade VCS Fabric technology............................................................. 28
● Brocade VCS Fabric technology use cases....................................................................33
● Topology and scaling...................................................................................................... 37
Introduction to Brocade Network OS
Brocade Network OS (NOS) is a scalable network operating system available for the Brocade data
center switching portfolio products, including the VDX product line.
Purpose-built for mission-critical, next-generation data centers, Network OS supports the following
capabilities:
Simplified
network
management
Brocade VCS fabrics are self-forming and self-healing, providing an operationally scalable
foundation for very large or dynamic cloud deployments. Multi-node fabrics can be managed as a
single logical element, and fabrics can be deployed and easily re-deployed in a variety of
configurations optimized to the needs of particular workloads.
For more information on Brocade VCS Fabric technology, refer to Introduction to Brocade VCS
Fabric technology on page 28 for an overview and Configuring Brocade VCS Fabrics on page
145 for configuration details.
High resiliency
Brocade VCS fabrics use hardware-based Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking to provide automatic
link failover without traffic interruption.
Improved
network
utilization
Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL)-based Layer 2 routing service provides
equal-cost multipaths in the network, resulting in improved network utilization. Brocade VCS Fabric
technology also delivers multiple active, fully load-balanced Layer 3 gateways to remove
constraints on Layer 2 domain growth, eliminate traffic tromboning, and enable inter-VLAN routing
within the fabric.
Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) eliminates a single point of failure in a static, default-
route environment by dynamically assigning virtual IP routers to participating hosts. The interfaces
of all routers in a virtual router must belong to the same IP subnet. There is no restriction against
reusing a virtual router ID (VRID) with a different address mapping on different LANs.
Refer to Fabric overview on page 145 for additional information about TRILL.
Refer to VRRP overview on page 597 for additional information on VRRP/VRRP-E.
Server
virtualization
Automatic Migration of Port Profile (AMPP) functionality provides fabric-wide configuration of
network policies, achieves per-port profile forwarding, and enables network-level features to
support Virtual Machine (VM) mobility.
Refer to Configuring AMPP on page 327 for more information about AMPP.
Network OS Administrator’s Guide 27
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