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

288 Fabric Manager Administrator’s Guide
53-10000610-02
About FCIP Tunneling
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This means that a switch with two GigE ports can have up to 16 virtual Fibre Channel ports. A
properly configured FCIP tunnel between two virtual Fibre Channel ports is an FCIP interswitch link
(FCIP ISL). For a properly configured tunnel, the source or destination’s virtual Fibre Channel port
must be configured as a virtual E_Port (VE_Port), and the other end configured as a virtual EX_Port
(VEX_Port). An FCIP tunnel between a VE_Port and a VEX_Port is an FCIP interfabric link (FCIP IFL)
and does not merge the fabrics. Configuring both the source and destination virtual Fibre Channel
ports as VE_Ports merges the two fabrics. FCIP tunnels between two virtual Fibre Channel ports
configured as VEX_Ports is not supported.
Fibre Channel frame encapsulation on one end of the tunnel and the reconstruction of Fibre
Channel frames on the other end of the tunnel is transparent to the initiator and target.
GigE ports support FCIP with total link speeds up to 1 Gbps. Each GigE port supports up to eight
FCIP tunnels, but the cumulative speed will not exceed 1 Gbps.
See the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide for additional information about FCIP.
Figure 183 illustrates a portion of a Fibre Channel network using FCIP. The FCIP interswitch link
(VE_Ports connected through the IP network) joins two SANs (Data Center FC and Office FC) into
parts of a larger SAN, or a merged fabric.
FIGURE 183 Merged fabric using FCIP
Fibre
Channel
initiator
Fibre
Channel
initiator
Fibre
Channel
Target
Fibre
Channel
Target
VE_Port
VE_Port
VE_Port
VE_Port
Data Center
FC SAN
Office
FC SAN
Office
FC SAN
Office
FC SAN
IP WAN
Network
Brocade
48000
with FR4-18i
Blade
Brocade
48000
with FR4-18i
Blade
Brocade
7500
Brocade
7500
31.5