Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide, NX-OS 4.0 (OL-16598-01, June 2008)

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10-2
Nexus 5000 Series Switch Fabric Manager Software Configuration Guide
OL-16598-01
Chapter 10 Configuring Fibre Channel Interfaces
Information About Fibre Channel Interfaces
Each Fibre Channel port can be used as a downlink (connected to a server) or as an uplink (connected to
the data center SAN network). The Fibre Channel interfaces support the following modes: F, NP, E, TE,
and SD.
Virtual Fibre Channel Interfaces
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) encapsulation allows a physical Ethernet cable to simultaneously
carry Fibre Channel and classic Ethernet (CE) traffic. In the Nexus 5000 Series switches, an
FCoE-capable physical Ethernet interface can carry traffic for one logical CE interface and one logical
Fibre Channel interface. The logical interfaces are configured in the Nexus 5000 Series switch as virtual
interfaces. A virtual Fibre Channel interface represents the logical Fibre Channel interface.
A virtual Fibre Channel is configured as a subinterface of a virtual interface group (VIG).
Virtual Fibre Channel interfaces support only F mode, and offer a subset of the features that are
supported on physical Fibre Channel interfaces.
The following capabilities are not supported for virtual Fibre Channel interfaces:
• SAN port channels.
• VSAN trunking. The virtual Fibre Channel is associated with one VSAN.
• The SPAN destination cannot be a virtual Fibre Channel interface.
• Buffer-to-buffer credits.
• Exchange link parameters (ELP), or Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) protocol.
• Configuration of physical attributes (speed, rate, mode, transmitter information, MTU size).
• Port tracking.
Interface Modes
Each physical Fibre Channel interface in a switch may operate in one of several port modes: E mode, TE
mode, F mode, and SD mode (see Figure 10-1). A physical Fibre Channel interface can be configured as
an E port, an F port, or an SD port. Interfaces may also be configured in Auto mode; the port type is
determined during interface initialization.
In NPV mode, Fibre Channel interfaces may operate in NP mode, F mode or SD mode. For additional
information about NPV mode, see Chapter 12, “Configuring N-Port Virtualization.”
Virtual Fibre Channel interfaces can only be configured in F mode.