Brocade Access Gateway Administrator's Guide Supporting Fabric OS v7.0.0 (53-1002156-01, April 2011)

38 Access Gateway Administrator’s Guide
53-1002156-01
Port Grouping policy
3
Port Grouping policy modes
You can enable and disable the Automatic Login Balancing and Managed Fabric Name Monitoring
(MFNM) Port Grouping policy modes when you create port groups using the pgcreate command.
Alternately, you can enable these modes using the ag --pgsetmodes command.
Automatic Login Balancing mode
If Automatic Login Balancing mode is enabled for a port group and an F_Port goes offline, logins in
the port group are redistributed among the remaining F_Ports. Similarly, if an N_Port comes online,
port logins in the port group are redistributed to maintain a balanced N_Port-to-F_Port ratio.
Consider the following notes about Automatic Login Balancing mode:
• Automatic Login Balancing mode is disruptive. However, you can minimize disruption by
disabling or enabling rebalancing of F_Ports on F_Port offline events or N_Port online events.
Refer to “Rebalancing F_Ports” on page 39.
• You must explicitly enable Automatic Login Balancing on a port group.
• If an N_Port is deleted from a port group enabled for Automatic Login Balancing mode, the
F_Ports mapped to that N_Port stay with the port group as long as there are other N_Ports in
the group. Only the specified N_Port is removed from the port group. This is because the
F_Ports are logically associated with the port groups that are enabled for Automatic Login
Balancing mode. This is not the case for port groups not enabled for Automatic Login Balancing
mode. When you delete an N_Port from one of these port groups, the F_Ports that are mapped
to the N_Port move to PG0 along with the N_Port. This is because the F_Ports are logically
associated with the N_Ports in port groups not enabled for Automatic Login Balancing mode.
Managed Fabric Name Monitoring mode
When enabled, Managed Fabric Name Monitoring (MFNM) mode queries the fabric name at a
specific time period. If it detects an inconsistency, for example all the N_Ports within a port group
are not physically connected to the same physical or virtual fabric, it generates a RASLOG message.
In “default” mode, a message is logged into RASLOG. In “managed” mode, automatic failover is
disabled for all N_Ports within the N_Port group, and a message is logged into RASLOG about
multiple fabrics.
Enable or disable MFNM mode on a port group using steps under “Enabling MFNM mode” on
page 40 and “Disabling MFNM mode” on page 40. In both default and managed mode, the system
queries the fabric name once every 120 seconds. You can configure the monitoring timeout value
to something other than 120 seconds using steps under “Setting the current MFNM mode timeout
value” on page 41.
Creating a port group and enabling Automatic Login Balancing mode
1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account assigned to the admin role.
2. Enter the ag --pgcreate command with the appropriate options to create a port group. In the
following example, a port group named “FirstFabric” is created that includes N_Ports 1 and 3
and has Automatic Login Balancing (lb) enabled.
switch:admin> ag --pgcreate 3 “1;3” -n FirstFabric1 -m “lb”
Port Group 3 created successfully