Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v7.0.0 (53-1002148-02, June 2011)

48 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide

53-1002148-02

Enabling and disabling blades

FX8-24 compatibility notes

Note the following guidelines:

• The FR4-18i and Brocade 7500 GbE ports cannot be connected to either the FX8-24 or

Brocade 7800 GbE ports. The ports may come online, but they will not communicate with each

other. Running physical cables between the FR4 -18i and FX8-24 blades is not supported.

• The port configuration is maintained separately for the GbE ports of the FR4 -18i and FX8-24

blades. The port configuration data of one blade is never applied to the other type even if an

FX8-24 replaces an FR4-18i in the same slot of a chassis. However, if an FR4 -18i blade is

replaced with an FX8-24 blade and then replaced back with an FR4 -18i, the FR4 -18i previous

IP configuration data would be applied to the new FR4 -18i. The same behavior applies if you

were to replace the FX8-24 with an FX8-24.

• When Virtual Fabrics is disabled, replacing an FR4 -18i with an FX8-24 (and vice-versa) is

allowed without any pre-conditions

• When Virtual Fabrics is enabled (regardless of whether the FR4 -18i or FX8-24 blade is in the

default switch), replacing an FR4 -18i with an FX8-24 (and vice-versa) without rebooting or

power cycling the chassis will fault the blade with reason code 91. However, after blade

removal, if you reboot or power cycle the chassis, inserting the other blade type is allowed.

• The data paths in both blades are interoperable between FC ports. FR4-18i FC ports can

stream data over FX8-24 GbE ports and vice versa.

• The FX8-24 blade cannot co-exist with the FS8-18, and FCOE10-24 blades. For example, you

cannot have an

FA4-18 virtual device exported to an edge fabric, getting encrypted over an

FS8-18 blade, and then going over an FX8-24 FCIP distance VE_Port. There is no software

enforcement to detect the above configuration.

Enabling and disabling blades

Port blades are enabled by default. In some cases, you will need to disable a port blade to perform

diagnostics. When diagnostics are executed manually (from the Fabric OS command line), many

commands require the port blade to be disabled. This ensures that diagnostic activity does not

interfere with normal fabric traffic.

TABLE 8 Blade compatibility within a Brocade DCX, DCX-4S, and the Brocade DCX 8510 family backbone

Intelligent blade Fabric OS v6.3.0 Fabric OS v6.4.0 Fabric OS v7.0.0

DCX DCX-4S DCX DCX-4S DCX DCX-4S DCX 8510-8 DCX 8510-4

FR4-18i

1. The iSCSI function over FCIP is not supported, but the FCIP link is the same as other FC E_Ports. This is not

restricted by software.

84 8 4 8 4 0 0

FS8-18 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

FCOE10-24

2. Not compatible with other application blades or with the FC8-64 in the same chassis.

22 2 2 4 4 0 0

FX8-24

3. The hardware limit is enforced by software.

24 4 4 4 4 4 4