HP DC SAN Backbone Director Switch Hardware Reference Guide (5697-2158, August 2012)
DC Director Switch MP Extension blade (FX8-24) overview
The FX8-24 blade has 12 external 8Gb FC SFP ports supporting FC Routing Services, and 10
external 1-Gb Ethernet (GbE or GE) SFP ports supporting FCIP. There are also two licensable
external 10-Gb Ethernet (10GbE or 10GE) SFP ports supporting FCIP. The FX8-24 blade operates
with Fabric OS 6.3.0 and later, and communicates with the following:
• Another FX8-24
• 1606 Extension SAN Switch for both FC Routing Services and FCIP
• 400 MP Router or router blade for FC Routing Services
NOTE: The GbE ports on the FX8-24 are not compatible with the GbE ports on the FR4-18i blade
or the HP 400 Multi-Protocol (MP) Router switch. The GbE ports are compatible only with another
FX8-24 or a 1606 Extension SAN switch.
The FX8-24 operates in one of three modes:
• Ten 1-GbE ports
• Ten 1-GbE ports and one 10-GbE port
• Two 10-GbE ports (depends on licensing and subsequent configuration of GbE port mode)
NOTE: The port diagram on the front panel uses the abbreviations GE for 1-GbE ports and 10GE
for 10-GbE ports.
If the FX8-24 blade is operating in 10-GbE mode, the other end of the circuit must be an FX8-24
blade operating in either 10-GbE mode or dual mode with the corresponding VE_Ports in 10-GbE
mode.
FX8-24 features
The FX8-24 blade is intended as a platform for FCIP and FC Routing Services. For information on
configuring these features, see the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide.
The FX8-24 blade provides the following hardware features:
• 12 autosensing FC ports with link speeds of 1, 2, 4, or 8 Gb/s
• Ten GbE ports supporting FCIP with a fixed link speed of 1 Gb/s
• Two 10-GbE ports (licensable) supporting FCIP with a fixed link speed of 10 Gb/s
The FX8-24 blade also provides the following features:
• IPSec (with Fabric OS 6.4.0 and later)
• VEX support (with Fabric OS 6.4.0 and later)
• IPv6 support on 1G and 10G ports (with Fabric OS 6.4.0 and later)
• FCIP
• FC Routing (licensable)
• FCIP Trunking (licensable) with network-based failure recovery (failover only) and load
balancing
• Multiple circuits per trunk
Four per trunk through the GbE ports◦
◦ Ten per trunk through the 10-GbE ports
• SOTCP with reorder resistance
• FastWrite over FCIP
• Virtual E_Ports
• FCIP QoS
DC Director Switch MP Extension blade (FX8-24) overview 113