Brocade Access Gateway Admin Guide v6.1.0 (53-1000605-02, June 2008)

Access Gateway Administrator’s Guide 1
53-1000605-02
Chapter
1
Getting Started
This chapter describes how to create seamless connectivity to any Storage Area Network (SAN)
fabric using Access Gateway (AG). It provides information on how to set the port types, port
mappings, and the policies to ensure a stable fabric.
AG is compatible with Fabric OS, M-EOS, and Cisco-based fabrics. Enabling and disabling AG mode
on a switch can be performed from the command line interface (CLI) or using Web Tools, Fabric
Manager (5.3) or EFCM (9.6). This document describes configurations using the CLI commands.
In this chapter
•Brocade Access Gateway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
•Fabric OS features in Access Gateway mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
•Comparison of Access Gateway ports to standard switch ports . . . . . . . . . . 3
•Access Gateway port types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
•How Access Gateway maps ports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
•Upgrade and downgrade considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
•Considerations with policies enabled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
•Advance Device Security policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
•Automatic Port Configuration policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
•Port Grouping policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Brocade Access Gateway
Brocade Access Gateway is a Fabric OS feature that lets you configure your Enterprise fabric to
handle additional N_Ports instead of domains. You do this by configuring F_Ports to connect to the
fabric as N_Ports, which increases the number of device ports you can connect to a single fabric.
Multiple Gas can connect to the DCX enterprise-class platform, directors, and switches.
After you set a Fabric OS switch to AG mode, the F_ports connect to the Enterprise fabric as
N_Ports rather than as E_Ports. They connect as E_Ports if the Fabric OS switch is in Native mode.
Figure 1 shows a comparison of a configuration that connects eight hosts to a fabric using AG to
the same configuration with Fabric OS switches in Native mode.
Switches in AG mode are logically transparent to the host and the fabric. You can increase the
number of hosts to have access to the fabric without increasing the number of switches. This
simplifies configuration and management in a large fabric by reducing the number of domain IDs
and ports.