Fcip Concepts - Brocade Communications Systems StoreFabric SN6500B Administrator's Manual

1

FCIP concepts

TABLE 1
Capabilities
•
FICON extension
•
•
•
•
•
•
IPsec
•
VEX_Ports
Support for third-party WAN
optimization hardware
IPv6 addresses for FCIP
tunnels
Support for jumbo frames
1.
2.
FCIP concepts
Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) enables you to use existing IP wide area network (WAN) infrastructure
to connect Fibre Channel SANs. FCIP supports applications such as remote data replication (RDR),
centralized SAN backup, and data migration over very long distances that are impractical or very
costly using native Fibre Channel connections. FCIP tunnels are used to pass Fibre Channel I/O
through an IP network. FCIP tunnels are built on a physical connection between two peer switches
or blades. Fibre Channel frames enter FCIP through virtual E_Ports (VE_Ports or VEX_Ports) and are
encapsulated and passed to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer connections. The TCP
connections ensure in-order delivery of FC frames and lossless transmission. The Fibre Channel
fabric and all Fibre Channel targets and initiators are unaware of the presence of the IP network.
Figure 1
tunneling.
2
FCIP capabilities by platform (Continued)
Enforcement 802.1P - VLAN
tagging
FICON emulation
IBM z/OS Global Mirror
(formerly eXtended Remote
Copy or XRC) acceleration
Tape read acceleration
Tape write acceleration
Teradata emulation
1
Printer emulation
AES encryption algorithm
2
Not supported in Fabric OS version v7.0 and later.
IPv6 addressing is not supported in conjunction with IPsec in Fabric
OS version v7.0.1 and later.
on page 3 shows the relationship of FC and TCP/IP layers, and the general concept of FCIP
7800 switch FX8-24 blade
Yes Yes
Yes Yes
Yes Yes
Transport mode Transport mode
Yes Yes
1
No No
Yes Yes
No No
MTU of 1500 is MTU of 1500 is
maximum maximum
Fabric OS FCIP Administrator's Guide
53-1002748-01