Users Guide

– PFC enabled or disabled
– No bandwidth limit or no ETS processing
• ETS uses the DCB MIB IEEE 802.1azd2.5.
Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol (DCBx)
By default, the data center bridging exchange (DCBx) protocol is disabled; ETS is also disabled.
DCBx allows a switch to automatically discover DCB-enabled peers and exchange configuration information. PFC and ETS use
DCBx to exchange and negotiate parameters with peer devices. DCBx capabilities include:
• Discovery of DCB capabilities on peer-device connections.
• Determination of possible mismatch in DCB configuration on a peer link.
• Configuration of a peer device over a DCB link.
DCBx requires the link layer discovery protocol (LLDP) to provide the path to exchange DCB parameters with peer devices.
Exchanged parameters are sent in organizationally specific TLVs in LLDP data units. For more information, see Link Layer
Discovery Protocol (LLDP). The following LLDP TLVs are supported for DCB parameter exchange:
PFC parameters PFC Configuration TLV and Application Priority Configuration TLV.
ETS parameters ETS Configuration TLV and ETS Recommendation TLV.
Data Center Bridging in a Traffic Flow
The following figure shows how DCB handles a traffic flow on an interface.
Figure 30. DCB PFC and ETS Traffic Handling
Data Center Bridging (DCB) 248