Bladesystem With Brocade Access Gateway Mode - HP StorageWorks 4000/6000/8000 - Enterprise Virtual Arrays Reference Manual

BladeSystem with Brocade Access Gateway mode

AG mode is a software-enabled feature available with the Brocade 8Gb SAN Switch for HP
BladeSystem c-Class and the Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch for HP c-Class and p-Class BladeSystems
with Fabric OS 5.2.1b (or later). AG mode does not require the purchase of additional hardware or
software.
Blade switches in AG mode function as port aggregators using NPIV to connect to NPIV-compliant
Fibre Channel switches (including other vendor switches). The blade switches are logically transparent
to the hosts and fabric—they no longer function as standard switches.
NOTE:
This section discusses HP c-Class BladeSystems, but HP p-Class BladeSystems also support AG mode.
The Brocade 8Gb SAN Switch for HP BladeSystem c-Class and the Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch for HP
c-Class BladeSystems in AG mode supports a maximum of 24 ports:
Maximum of 16 ports for back-end connections to blade server
Maximum of 8 external ports used as uplink N_Ports
AG mode features include:
The 8 external ports function as N_Ports, supporting NPIV. They connect to standard switches that
support NPIV-compliant F_Ports.
AG mode does not use a domain ID, preventing domain-count limits in large fabrics.
AG mode uses port mapping between the host-facing ports (virtual F_Ports) and the external uplink
ports (N_Ports). The default mapping is 2:1 ports, which you can reconfigure as needed.
Figure 49 shows a view of an HP c-Class BladeSystem in AG mode.
SAN Design Reference Guide 189