High-Integrity Fabrics; Minimum Requirements - McDATA StorageWorks 2/140 - Director Switch Planning Manual

High-Integrity
Fabrics
Minimum
Requirements
Cascaded FICON directors and switches must support high-integrity
fabrics. McDATA fabric elements must have the SANtegrity Binding
feature installed and operational with Enterprise Fabric Mode enabled.
High-integrity fabric architecture support includes:
• Fabric binding - Only directors or switches with fabric binding
installed are allowed to attach to specified fabrics in a SAN.
Specifically:
— Fabric elements without a SANtegrity Binding feature key are
prohibited from connecting to fabric elements with an active
SANtegrity Binding feature key.
— Inherent to directors and switches with an active SANtegrity
Binding feature key is a fabric membership list (comprised of
acceptable WWNs and Domain_IDs) of the elements logged
into the fabric. This membership list is exchanged between
fabric elements, and an element with an incompatible list is
isolated from the fabric. Membership list data eliminates
duplicate Domain_IDs and other address conflicts and
ensures a consistent, unified behavior across the fabric.
• Switch binding - Switch binding allows only specified devices
and fabric elements to connect to specified director or switch
ports.
• Insistent Domain_ID - When enabled through the Enterprise
Fabric Mode dialog box, this parameter ensures duplicate
Domain_IDs are not used within a fabric. It also ensures a fabric
element cannot automatically change its Domain_ID when a
director or switch with a duplicate Domain_ID attempts to join
the fabric. The invalid (duplicate Domain_ID) fabric element is
rejected, and intentional user intervention is required to change
the Domain_ID to a valid number.
For additional information about the SANtegrity Binding feature,
refer to SANtegrity Binding.
The following are minimum hardware, firmware, and software
requirements to configure and enable a FICON-cascaded SAN:
• A single-vendor switching environment with two or more of
the following McDATA directors or switches:
Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies
Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies
3
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