Brocade Fabric OS Administrator's Guide - Supporting Fabric OS v7.0.1 (53-1002446-01, March 2012)

394 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide
53-1002446-01
ICLs for the Brocade DCX 8510 Backbone family
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Refer to the hardware reference manuals for additional information about LED status and ICL
connections, including instructions on how to cable ICLs.
ICLs for the Brocade DCX 8510 Backbone family
Each ICL connects the core blades of two Brocade DCX 8510 chassis and provides up to 64 Gbps
of throughput within a single cable.
You can have up to 32 QSFP ports in a Brocade DCX 8510-8 chassis or 16 QSFP ports in a Brocade
DCX 8510-4 chassis, with up to 2 Tbps ICL bandwidth and support for up to 50 meters of universal
optical cables.
The Brocade DCX 8510-8 has four port groups on the CR16-8 core blade. The Brocade DCX 8510-4
has two port groups on the CR16-4 core blade. Each port group has four QSFP connectors, and
each QSFP connector maps to four user ports. Refer to the hardware reference manuals for details
about the port groups.
Following are ICL configuration guidelines for trunking bandwidth and High Availability:
ICLs must be installed in groups of two. Each pair of ICLs must be in the same port group.
The recommended minimum number of ICLs between two Brocade DCX 8510 chassis is four.
Additional ICLs should be added in increments of two.
For High Availability, you should have at least two ICLs from each core blade. Figure 58 shows
two Brocade DCX 8510-8 chassis connected with full redundancy using four ICL connections.
FIGURE 58 Minimum configuration for 64 Gbps ICLs
The maximum number of ICLs between two Brocade DCX 8510-4 chassis or between a
Brocade DCX 8510-8 and a Brocade DCX 8510-4 is 16.
The maximum number of ICLs between two Brocade DCX 8510-8 chassis is 32.
Because the FSPF routing logic uses only the first 16 paths to come online, only 16 ICLs are
utilized. With Virtual Fabrics, however, you can define two logical switches on the chassis and
have 16 ICLs in each.
NOTE
Brocade recommends that you have a maximum of eight ICLs connected to the same
neighboring domain, with a maximum of four ICLs from each core blade.
The ICLs can connect to either core blade in the neighboring chassis. Unlike the copper ICLs,
the QSFP ICLs do not need to be cross-connected.
Domain 1
DCX 8510-8
Domain 2
DCX 8510-8