Logical Switch Overview; Default Logical Switch; Figure 17 Switch Before And After Enabling Virtual Fabrics - HP StoreFabric SN6500B Administrator's Manual

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Logical switch overview

This chapter describes the logical switch and logical fabric features. For information about device
sharing with Virtual Fabrics, refer to
For information about supported switches and port types, refer to
Virtual Fabrics"
Virtual Fabrics and Admin Domains are mutually exclusive and are not supported at the same time
on a switch.
NOTE
A note on terminology: Virtual Fabrics is the name of the suite of features. A logical fabric is a type
of fabric that you can create using the Virtual Fabrics suite of features.

Logical switch overview

Traditionally, each switch and all the ports in the switch act as a single Fibre Channel switch (FC
switch) that participates in a single fabric. The logical switch feature allows you to divide a physical
chassis into multiple fabric elements. Each of these fabric elements is referred to as a logical
switch. Each logical switch functions as an independent self-contained FC switch.
NOTE
Each chassis can have multiple logical switches.

Default logical switch

To use the Virtual Fabrics features, you must first enable Virtual Fabrics on the switch. Enabling
Virtual Fabrics creates a single logical switch in the physical chassis. This logical switch is called
the default logical switch, and it initially contains all of the ports in the physical chassis.
Figure 17
10 ports, labeled P0 through P9.
FIGURE 17
276
on page 286.
shows a switch before and after enabling Virtual Fabrics. In this example, the switch has
Before enabling Virtual Fabrics
Physical chassis
P0 P3 P6 P9
P1 P4 P7
P2 P5 P8
Switch before and after enabling Virtual Fabrics
"FC-FC routing and Virtual Fabrics"
After enabling Virtual Fabrics
Default logical switch
P0
P1
P2
on page 606.
"Supported platforms for
Physical chassis
P3 P6 P9
P4 P7
P5 P8
Fabric OS Administrator's Guide
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