A Configuring The Pid Format; About Pids And Pid Binding; Summary Of Pid Formats - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

A Configuring the PID format
Port identifiers (called PIDs) are used by the routing and zoning services in Fibre Channel fabrics to identify
ports in the network. All devices in a fabric must use the same PID format, so when you add new
equipment to the SAN, you might need to change the PID format on legacy equipment.
NOTE: Fabric OS 6.0 only supports PID format 1 (Core PID).

About PIDs and PID binding

The PID is a 24-bit address built from the following three 8-bit fields:
• domain
• area_ID
• AL_PA
Many scenarios cause a device to receive a new PID; for example, unplugging the device from one port
and plugging it into a different port as part of fabric maintenance, or changing the domain ID of a switch,
which might be necessary when merging fabrics, or changing compatibility mode settings.
Some device drivers use the PID to map logical disk drives to physical Fibre Channel counterparts. Most
drivers can either change PID mappings dynamically, also called dynamic PID binding, or use the WWN
of the Fibre Channel disk for mapping, also called WWN binding.
Some older device drivers behave as if a PID uniquely identifies a device, they use static PID binding. These
device drivers should be updated, if possible, to use WWN or dynamic PID binding instead, because
static PID binding creates problems in many routine maintenance scenarios. Fortunately, very few device
drivers still behave this way. Many current device drivers enable you to select static PID binding as well as
WWN binding. You should only select static binding if there is a compelling reason, and only after you
have evaluated the impact of doing so.

Summary of PID formats

HP switches employ the following types of PID formats:
• VC encoded—The format defined by the HP StorageWorks 1Gb series switches. Connections to these
switches are not supported in Fabric OS 4.0.0 and later.
• Native—Introduced with the HP StorageWorks 2Gb series switches, this format supports up to 16 ports
per switch.
• Core—Default for the HP StorageWorks 4/8 SAN Switch, 4/16 SAN Switch, SAN Switch 2/8V, SAN
Switch 2/16V, SAN Switch 2/32, SAN Switch 4/32, SAN Switch 4/32B, 4/64 SAN Switch, 400
Multi-protocol Router,
c-Class BladeSystem,
name, DC Director). This is the recommended format for HP switches and fabrics. It uses the entire 8-bit
address space and directly uses the port number as the area_ID. It supports up to 256 ports per switch.
• Extended edge—A format that generates the same PID for a port on switches with 16 ports or less as
would native PID format, but also supports up to 256 ports per domain. It should be used only in cases
where you cannot upgrade devices to dynamic PID binding and you absolutely cannot reboot your
servers.
Extended edge PID is supported in Fabric OS 2.6.2 and later, 3.1.2 and later, and 4.2.0 through
5.3.0.
NOTE: Extended Edge is not supported on any switch with Fabric OS 6.0 or later.
Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch for HP p-Class BladeSystem, Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch for HP
SAN Director 2/128, 4/256 SAN Director, and DC SAN Backbone Director (short
Fabric OS 6.x administrator guide 463