Brocade Web Tools Administrator's Guide (53-0000194-01, November 2006)

7-4 Web Tools Administrator’s Guide

Publication Number: 53-0000194-01

Tape Pipelining

Tape pipelining reduces the number of round trip times required to complete a SCSI write I/O and also

eliminates the sequential nature of SCSI I/O. This results in reducing the I/O completion latency and

increasing FCIP ISL bandwidth utilization. FCIP tape pipelining reduces the wait time for backup

applications while performing backup to tape devices and eliminates the sequential nature of I/O.

Tape pipelining is not supported when there are two or more tunnels going between two SilkWorm 7500

switches and FR4-18i blades. Tape pipelining is not supported with two or more tunnels with different

or the same cost path.

When you created the FCIP tunnel, you should get details on the supported FCIP tunnel configuration

combinations as shown in Table 7-1. For example, fastwrite and tape pipelining cannot be configured

together with IPSec; however, compression can be used with fastwrite, tape pipelining, or IPSec.

IKE/IPSec Policy

IPSec is a framework of open standards to ensure private, secure communications over Internet Protocol

(IP) networks through the use of cryptographic security services. IKE (Internet Key Exchange) is the

protocol used to set up a Security Association in the IPSec protocol suite.

IPSec supports network-level data integrity, data confidentiality, data origin authentication, and replay

protection. It provides security for almost all protocols in the TCP/IP suite. Because IPSec is applied

transparently to applications, there is no need to configure security separately for each application that

uses TCP/IP.

aution

Fastwrite must be enabled on the tunnel in order to turn on tape pipelining.

Table 7-1 FCIP Tunnel Supported Feature Configurations

Compression Fastwrite Tape Pipelining IPSec

Disabled Disabled Disabled Disabled

Enabled Disabled Disabled Disabled

Enabled Enabled Disabled Disabled

Enabled Disabled Enabled Disabled

Enabled Enabled Enabled Disabled

Disabled Disabled Disabled Enabled

Enabled Disabled Disabled Enabled

ote

You need an IPSec license to enable and use this feature.