A Metasan With Interfabric Links - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

Figure 31 shows a metaSAN consisting of three edge fabrics connected through a 4/256 SAN Director
or DC Director containing an FR4- 1 8i with interfabric links.
Edge
fabric 1
E_Port
Fibre
Channel
switch
Figure 31

A metaSAN with interfabric links

• Fabric ID (FID)
Every EX_Port and VEX_Port uses the fabric ID (FID) to identify the fabric at the opposite end of the IFL.
Configure all of the EX_Ports and VEX_Ports attached to the same edge fabric with the same FID. The
FID for every edge fabric must be unique from each backbone fabric's perspective. Configure the FID
for all of the EX_Ports and VEX_Ports from a backbone fabric to uniquely reference each of the attached
edge fabrics.
When two different backbones are connected to the same edge fabric, the backbone fabric IDs must
be different but the edge fabric ID must be the same. Configuring the same backbone fabric ID for two
backbones that are connected to the same edge is invalid. In this configuration, a RASLog message
displays a warning about fabric ID overlap.
Backbone fabrics which share connections to the same edge fabrics must have unique backbone fabric
IDs.
• Fibre channel router
A switch running the FC-FC routing service.
• Logical storage area networks (LSANs)
An LSAN is defined by zones in two or more edge or backbone fabrics that contain the same devices.
You can create LSANs that can span fabrics. These LSANs enable Fibre Channel zones to cross
physical SAN boundaries without merging the fabrics while maintaining the access controls of zones
(see Figure 32).
An LSAN device can be a "physical device," meaning that it physically exists in the fabric, or it can be
a proxy device. A proxy device represents a real device in a remote fabric. It has a name server entry
and is assigned a valid port ID. When a proxy device is created in a fabric, the real device is
considered to be imported into this fabric. The presence of a proxy device is required for interfabric
device communication.
296 Using the FC-FC Routing Service
Host
Edge
fabric 2
E_Port
IFL
EX_Ports
4/256 SAN Director
with FR4-18i blade
Target
Edge
fabric 3
E_Port
IFL
Long Distance IFL
Target
Fibre
Channel
switch
26415a