HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 6.1.1 administrator guide (5697-0235, December 2009)

314 Using the FC-FC routing service
Figure 38 A metaSAN with edge-to-edge and backbone fabrics
Figure 38 shows a metaSAN with a backbone consisting of one 400 MP Router connecting hosts in
Edge Fabrics 1 and 3 with storage in Edge Fabric 2 and the backbone through the use of LSANs. There
are devices shared between the backbone and Edge Fabric 1, between Edge Fabric 1 and Edge Fabric
2, and between Edge Fabric 2 and Edge Fabric 3.
• MetaSAN
A metaSAN is the collection of all SANs interconnected with Fibre Channel routers.
A simple metaSAN can be constructed using a 400 MP Router, the 4/256 SAN Director or DC
Director with an FR4-18i to connect two or more separate fabrics. Additional FC routers can be used to
increase the available bandwidth between fabrics and to provide redundancy.
• Proxy device
A proxy device is a virtual device imported into a fabric by a Fibre Channel router, and represents a
real device on another fabric. It has a name server entry and is assigned a valid port ID. When a proxy
device is created in a fabric, the real Fibre Channel device is considered to be imported into this fabric.
The presence of a proxy device is required for interfabric device communication. See Figure 40 on
page 316 for additional information about proxy devices.
• Proxy PID
A proxy PID is the port ID (PID) of the proxy device. The proxy device appears to the fabric as a real
Fibre Channel device, has a name server entry, and is assigned a valid port ID. The port ID is only
relevant on the fabric in which the proxy device has been created.
• 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.
A front phantom domain is a domain that is projected from the FC router to the edge fabric. There is
one front phantom domain from the FCR to an edge fabric, regardless of the number of EX_Ports
connected from that router to the edge fabric. Another FC router connected to the same edge fabric
projects a different front phantom domain.
The second level of phantom domains is known as a translate phantom domain. The EX_Ports also
present translate phantom domains in edge fabrics as being topologically behind the front domains; if
the translate phantom domain is in a backbone fabric, it is topologically present behind the Fibre
Channel router because there is no front domain in a backbone fabric.The translate phantom domain is
Edge fabric 1
Backbone fabric
Edge fabric 3
Edge fabric 2
IP cloud
= LSAN
400 MP
Router
VEX_Port
VE_Port
EX_Port (2)
E_Port
E_Port
IFL
IFL IFL
26416a