HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 6.2 administrator guide (5697-0016, May 2009)

Fabric OS 6.2 administrator guide 173
6 Managing virtual fabrics
Virtual Fabrics overview
Virtual Fabrics is an architecture used 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
This chapter describes the Logical Switch and Logical Fabric features. For information about device sharing
with Virtual Fabrics, see ”FC-FC routing and Virtual Fabrics” on page 401.
The following platforms are Virtual Fabrics-capable:
• HP StorageWorks DC SAN Backbone Director and HP StorageWorks DC04 SAN Director
• HP StorageWorks 8/80 SAN Switch
• HP StorageWorks 8/40 SAN Switch
For additional information about supported switches and port types, see ”Supported platforms for Virtual
Fabrics” on page 181.
Virtual Fabrics and Admin Domains are mutually exclusive and are not supported at the same time on a
switch.
Logical Switch
Traditionally, each switch and all the ports in the switch act as a single Fibre Channel switch (FC switch)
that participates in a single fabric. The Logical Switch feature allows you to divide a physical chassis into
multiple fabric elements. Each of these fabric elements is referred to as a Logical Switch. Each Logical
Switch functions as an independent self-contained FC switch.
Default Logical Switch
To use the Virtual Fabrics features, you must first enable Virtual Fabrics on the switch. The switch must be
Virtual Fabrics-capable (HP StorageWorks DC SAN Backbone Director, HP StorageWorks DC04 SAN
Director, HP StorageWorks 8/80 SAN Switch, or HP StorageWorks 8/40 SAN Switch). Enabling Virtual
Fabrics creates a single Logical Switch in the physical chassis. This Logical Switch is called the default
Logical Switch, and it initially contains all of the ports in the physical chassis. Figure 8 shows a switch
before and after enabling Virtual Fabrics. In this example, the switch has 10 ports, labeled P0 through P9.