Brocade Fabric Manager Administrator's Guide v6.1.0 (53-10000610-02, June 2008)

276 Fabric Manager Administrator’s Guide

53-10000610-02

About Fibre Channel routing

Fibre Channel routing provides connectivity to devices in different fabrics without merging the

fabrics. For example, using Fibre Channel routing you can share tape drives across multiple fabrics

without the administrative problems, such as change management, network management,

scalability, reliability, availability, and serviceability, that might result from merging the fabrics.

Fibre Channel routing allows you to create logical storage area networks (LSANs) that can span

fabrics. These LSANs allow Fibre Channel zones to cross physical SAN boundaries without merging

the fabrics and while maintaining the access controls of zones.

Fibre Channel routing requires some additional terminology:

NOTE

Devices on edge fabrics that are connected to a Brocade AP7420 Multiprotocol Router cannot

communicate with devices in the backbone fabric.

Figure 174 on page 277 shows a metaSAN with a backbone consisting of one Brocade 7500

connecting hosts in Edge Fabric 1 and 3 with storage in Edge Fabric 2 and the backbone fabric

through the use of LSANs. A device is shared between the following pairs of fabrics:

• The backbone fabric and Edge Fabric 1

• Edge Fabric 1 and Edge Fabric 2

• Edge Fabric 2 and Edge Fabric 3

FC Router A switch running FC-FC Routing Service.

EX_Port A type of port that functions somewhat like an E_Port, but does not

propagate fabric services or routing topology information from one fabric to

another. A VEX_Port is similar to an EX_Port, but is a virtual port that

enables routing functionality using an FCIP tunnel.

Interfabric link (IFL) The link between an E_Port and an EX_Port, or a VE_Port and a VEX_Port.

Edge fabric A standard Fibre Channel fabric with targets and initiators connected

through an FC Router to another Fibre Channel fabric.

Backbone fabric An FC Router can connect two edge fabrics; a backbone fabric connects FC

Routers. The backbone fabric is the fabric to which the FC Router switch

belongs. A backbone fabric consists of at least one FC Router and possibly

a number of Fabric OS-based Fibre Channel switches. Initiators and targets

in the edge fabric can communicate with devices in the backbone fabric

through the FC Router.

metaSAN The collection of all SANs interconnected with FC Routers.