Brocade Access Gateway Administrator's Guide (53-1000605-01, October 2007)

Access Gateway Administrator’s Guide 13
53-1000605-01
Access Gateway policies
1
The APC is mutually exclusive with the Port Grouping policy. When this policy is enabled on a switch
connected to multiple fabrics, no attempt is made by Access Gateway to restrict failover behavior
even if N_Ports are connected to unrelated fabrics. It is recommended not to use this policy when
Access Gateway is connected to multiple fabrics.
If you need to restore the mapping that was in place before the APC was enabled, then you must
perform the following while enabling and disabling APC:
1. While enabling APC
a. Upload the config file
b. Disable the switch
c. Enable APC
d. Enable the switch
2. While disabling APC
a. Disable the switch
b. Disable APC
c. Enable the switch
d. Download the config file stored before enabling APC
For full instructions on how to enable the APC, refer to Chapter 4, “Managing Ports in Access
Gateway mode”.
Rebalancing of F_Ports
When the APC is enabled there will be no static mappings between F_Ports and N_Ports and no
F_Ports will be tied to a specific N_Port. When an F_Port comes online after the initial mapping is
done, the F_Ports are automatically routed through one of the available N_Ports such that the
F_Ports are evenly balanced across all the available N_Ports. Similarly if a new N_Port comes
online after initial F_Port initialization is done, some of the F_Ports being routed through existing
N_Ports would be failed-over to the new N_Ports, if rebalancing is needed.
NOTE
Due to the disruption caused by the redistribution of F_Ports, it is recommended to map all N_Ports
on the module during a maintenance window.
Firmware upgrade and downgrade
If you upgrade from Fabric OS v5.3.x to v6.0.0, then by default the APC is disabled. A firmware
downgrade from v6.0.0 to v5.3.x is not allowed if the APC is enabled. The policy must be disabled
before downgrading the firmware.