Users Guide

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 547
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Virtual Fabrics considerations for ICLs
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ICL trunking on the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S
ICL trunks form automatically but additional licenses may be required for enabling all ICL ports or
for larger ICL configurations. For more information about ICL licensing options, refer to Chapter 21,
“Administering Licensing”. The ICLs are managed the same as ISL trunks.
• On the Brocade DCX, each ICL is managed as two 8-port ISL trunks.
• On the Brocade DCX-4S, each ICL is managed as one 8-port ISL trunk.
Follow the guidelines in the specific hardware reference manuals for connecting the ICL cables.
Virtual Fabrics considerations for ICLs
In Virtual Fabrics, the ICL ports can be split across the logical switch, base switch, and default
switch. The triangular topology requirement must be met for each fabric individually.
The following restrictions apply:
• ICL ports cannot be in a logical switch that is using XISLs. The “Allow XISL Use” attribute for the
switch must be off.
• All of the user ports in an ICL cable must be in the same logical switch. Distributing the user
ports within the same cable across multiple logical switches is not supported.
Supported topologies for ICL connections
You can connect the Brocade Backbones in a mesh topology and a core-edge topology. A brief
description of each follows. (You can also connect two DCX 8510 chassis point-to-point.)
The illustrations in this section show sample topologies. Refer to the Brocade SAN Scalability
Guidelines for details about maximum topology configurations.
Mesh topology
You can connect the Brocade Backbones in a mesh topology, in which every chassis is connected
to every other chassis.
A simple form of the mesh topology is the triangular topology (shown in Figure 75). The triangular
topology is supported by three Brocade Backbone chassis. The chassis for each topology must all
be from the same family:
• Brocade DCX Backbone family (DCX or DCX-4S)
• Brocade DCX 8510 Backbone family (DCX 8510-8 or DCX 8510-4)