Understanding Fibre Channel Services; In This Chapter; Fibre Channel Services Overview - Brocade Communications Systems 1606 Administrator's Manual

Understanding Fibre Channel Services

In this chapter

Fibre Channel services overview

Fibre Channel services define service functions such as the Name Server, Management Server,
Security Key Distribution Server, and Time Server. Every Brocade switch has reserved three byte
addresses referred to as well-known addresses. These services provided by Brocade switches
reside at these addresses and provide a service to either nodes or management applications in the
fabric.
FIGURE 5
Fabric login — The fabric login server assigns a fabric address. This allows a fabric node to
communicate with services on the switch or other nodes in the fabric. Fabric addresses assigned
to nodes are three bytes long and are a combination of the domain ID and the port area number of
the port where the node is attached.
Directory server — The directory server or name server is where fabric and public nodes register
themselves and query to discover other devices in the fabric.
Fabric controller — The fabric controller provides state change notifications to registered nodes
when a change in the fabric topology occurs.
Time server — The time server sends to the member switches in the fabric the time on either the
principal switch or the Primary FCS switch.
Management server — The management server provides a single point for managing the fabric.
Alias server — The alias server keeps a group of nodes registered as one name to handle multicast
groups.
Fabric OS Administrator's Guide
53-1001336-01
•
Fibre Channel services overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
•
The Management Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
•
Platform services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
•
Management server database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
•
Topology discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Well-Known Addresses
Chapter
3
51