Port Mirroring; Port Fencing - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Release Note

Port Mirroring

On the 8/80 SAN Switch, the Port Mirroring feature has a limitation where all port mirror resources
must remain in the same ASIC port group. The resources are the configure mirror port, Source
Device, and Destination Device or ISL, if the Destination Device is located on another switch. The
ASIC port groups are 0-15, 16-31, 32-47, 48-63, and 64-79. The routes will be broken if the
port mirror resources are spread over multiple port groups.
Port Mirroring is not supported on the 1606 Extension SAN Switch.
See the portMirror command in the Command Reference Guide for more information on mirror
port configuration and requirements.
10G interoperability
10G interoperability between the HP StorageWorks SAN Director 6 Port 10Gb FC Blade and McDATA
blades is not supported due to a hardware limitation. However, the SAN Director 6 Port 10Gb FC
Blade is supported in a chassis running in interopmode 2 or 3 (SAN Director 6 Port 10Gb FC Blade
to SAN Director 6 Port 10Gb FC Blade connections only). A SAN Director 6 Port 10Gb FC Blade
will not synchronize with a McDATA 10Gb blade, but this will not negatively impact the system.

Port Fencing

For Port Fencing, once the trigger threshold is exceeded (for example, for ITWs, CRCs, or LRs),
Fabric Watch waits for approximately six seconds to see if the port is going offline. If it is still
online at the next poll cycle, Fabric Watch fences the port. Extensive testing has shown that ports
in the process of going offline may exhibit bursts of errors. Waiting the additional six seconds to
check the port status helps prevent false positives and unnecessarily fencing a port (for example,
during a server reboot).
When using Port Fencing, you must first run the fwalarmsfilterset command. This command
enables the port and allows you to receive Port Fencing messages.
The state-changes counter used by Fabric Watch in Fabric OS 6.3 has been updated to ignore
any toggling of F_Ports due to planned internal mechanisms, such as throttling and trunking. There
are some Fabric OS CLI commands, such as portcfgspeed and portCfgTrunkPort, that
implicitly disable/enable ports after configuration.
Fabric Watch monitors state change for LISL ports, even though it is not displayed in Fabric Watch
CLI commands.
The Port Fencing feature is not supported for Loss of Sync (LOS) and Link Failure (LF) areas of
Port/F-Port/E-Port classes. State change area can be used in place of LOS/LF areas for Port Fencing.
ICLs
If a DC SAN Director with an 8-link ICL license is connected to a DC SAN Director with a 16-link
license, the DC SAN Director with the 16-link license will report enc_out errors. The errors are
harmless, but will continue to increment. These errors will not be reported if a DC SAN Director
with a 16-link license is connected to a DC04 SAN Director with only 8-link ICL ports.
If ICL ports are disabled on only one side of an ICL link, the enabled side may see enc_out errors.
Extended Fabrics and R_RDY flow control
Starting with Fabric OS 5.1, the Extended Fabrics feature is supported with R_RDY flow control.
(R_RDY flow control mode can be enabled using the portCfgISLMode command.) R_RDY flow
control mode that uses IDLE primitives does not support frame-based trunking for devices such as
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