Reference Guide

Fabric OS FCIP Administrator’s Guide 11

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FX8-24 blade license options

• 10 Gbps mode: VE_Ports 12 through 21 use xge1; VE_Ports 22 through 31 use xge0

NOTE

In 10 Gbps mode, you can also configure VE_Ports 12 through 21 to use port xge0 as a

crossport and VE_Ports 22 through 31 to use port xge1 as a crossport. Refer to “Crossports”

on page 13 for more information.

Considerations for using VE_Ports and FCIP tunnels

Consider the following when using VE_Ports and tunnels:

• Total bandwidth cannot exceed 20 Gbps for VE_Ports.

• As a best practice, Fibre Channel traffic through a VE_Port tunnel should not exceed

recommended oversubscription guidelines. General guidelines include 2-to-1 oversubscription

without compression (for example, 1 Gbps over a 500 Mbps tunnel) and 4-to-1

oversubscription with compression.

• VE_Ports or VEX_Ports cannot connect to the same domain at the same time as Fibre Channel

E_Ports or EX_Ports.

FCIP trunking capacity on the FX8-24 blade

FCIP trunking provides load leveling and failover capabilities through the use of multiple FCIP

circuits:

• FCIP tunnels using 1 GbE or 10 GbE ports can have up to ten FCIP circuits spread across any

GbE ports.

• You can define up to eight IP addresses (0 through 8 minus the default IPv6 “link-local”

address) for a GbE port.

• Up to four FCIP circuits can be configured per 1 GbE port, each requiring a unique IP address.

• Up to ten FCIP circuits can be configured per 10 GbE port, each requiring a unique IP address.

• A single circuit between 1 GbE ports cannot exceed 1 Gbps capacity.

10 GbE port considerations

Enhanced 10GbE port operation is different than 1 GbE port operation and requires special

considerations when configuring circuits, tunnels, failover operations, and bandwidth.

Multigigabit circuits

For each 10 GbE port, you can configure multigigabit circuits. For example, a single 10 Gbps circuit

or two 5 Gbps circuits can be configured per port. A limit of 10 FCIP circuits can be configured on a

single port. The blade at each end of the tunnel must be running Fabric OS v7.0 and later if the

committed rate for circuits exceeds 1 Gbps.The maximum committed rate for a circuit between 10

GbE ports is 10 Gbps.