Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v6.4.0 (53-1001763-01, June 2010)

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 209
53-1001763-01
Chapter
10
Managing Virtual Fabrics
In this chapter
Virtual Fabrics overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Logical switch overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Logical fabric overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Management model for logical switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Account management and Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Supported platforms for Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Limitations and restrictions of Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Enabling Virtual Fabrics mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Disabling Virtual Fabrics mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Configuring logical switches to use basic configuration values . . . . . . . . . 225
Creating a logical switch or base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Executing a command in a different logical fabric context. . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Deleting a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Adding and removing ports on a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Displaying logical switch configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Changing the fabric ID of a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Changing a logical switch to a base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Configuring a logical switch to use XISLs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Changing the context to a different logical fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Creating a logical fabric using XISLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Virtual Fabrics overview
Virtual Fabrics is an architecture to virtualize hardware boundaries. Traditionally, SAN design and
management is done at the granularity of a physical switch. The Virtual Fabrics feature allows SAN
design and management to be done at the granularity of a port.
Virtual Fabrics is a suite of related features that can be customized based on your needs. The
Virtual Fabrics suite consists of the following specific features:
Logical switch
Logical fabric
Device sharing