A Metasan With Edge-To-Edge And Backbone Fabrics - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

Edge fabric 1
E_Port
IFL
400 MP
Router
Figure 32

A metaSAN with edge-to-edge and backbone fabrics

Figure 32 shows a metaSAN with a backbone consisting of one 400 MP Router connecting hosts in
Edge Fabrics 1 and 3 with storage in Edge Fabric 2 and the backbone through the use of LSANs. There
are devices shared between the backbone and Edge Fabric 1, between Edge Fabric 1 and Edge Fabric
2, and between Edge Fabric 2 and Edge Fabric 3.
• MetaSAN
A metaSAN is the collection of all SANs interconnected with Fibre Channel routers.
A simple metaSAN can be constructed using a 400 MP Router, the 4/256 SAN Director or DC
Director with an FR4- 1 8i to connect two or more separate fabrics. Additional FC routers can be used to
increase the available bandwidth between fabrics and to provide redundancy.
• Proxy device
A proxy device is a virtual device imported into a fabric by a Fibre Channel router, and represents a
real device on another fabric. When a proxy device is created in a fabric, the real Fibre Channel
device is considered to be imported into this fabric. The presence of a proxy device is required for
interfabric device communication.
• Proxy PID
A proxy PID is the port ID (PID) of the proxy device. The proxy device appears to the fabric as a real
Fibre Channel device, has a name server entry, and is assigned a valid port ID. The port ID is only
relevant on the fabric in which the proxy device has been created.
• Phantom domains
A phantom domain is a domain emulated by the Fibre Channel router. The FC router can emulate two
types of phantom domains. The first set of phantom domains are known as front phantom domains.
There is one front phantom domain from the FCR to an edge fabric.
The second level of phantom domains is known as a translate phantom domain. The EX_Ports also
present translate phantom domains in edge fabrics as being topologically behind the front domains; if
the translate phantom domain is in a backbone fabric, then it is topologically present behind the Fibre
Channel router because there is no front domain in a backbone fabric.The translate phantom domain is
a router virtual domain that represents an entire fabric. Device connectivity can be achieved from one
fabric to another—over the backbone or edge fabric through this virtual domain—without merging the
two fabrics. Translate phantom domains are sometimes referred to as translate domains or xlate
domains.
Edge fabric 2
VEX_Port
EX_Port (2)
Backbone fabric
VE_Port
IP cloud
Edge fabric 3
E_Port
IFL
IFL
Fabric OS 6.1.x administrator guide 297
= LSAN
26416a