Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v7.0.0 (53-1002148-02, June 2011)
Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 215
53-1002148-02
Logical switch overview
10
After you enable Virtual Fabrics, you can create up to seven additional logical switches, depending
on the switch model.
Figure 23 shows a Virtual Fabrics-enabled switch before and after it is divided into logical switches.
Before you create logical switches, the chassis appears as a single switch (default logical switch).
After you create logical switches, the chassis appears as multiple independent logical switches. All
of the ports continue to belong to the default logical switch until you explicitly move them to other
logical switches.
The default logical switch always exists. You can add and delete other logical switches, but you
cannot delete the default logical switch unless you disable Virtual Fabrics.
FIGURE 23 Switch before and after creating logical switches
Logical switches and fabric IDs
When you create a logical switch, you must assign it a fabric ID (FID). The fabric ID uniquely
identifies each logical switch within a chassis and indicates to which fabric the logical switch
belongs. You cannot define multiple logical switches with the same fabric ID within the chassis.
In Figure 24 on page 216, logical switches 2, 3, 4, and 5 are assigned FIDs of 1, 15, 8, and 20,
respectively. These logical switches belong to different fabrics, even though they are in the same
physical chassis. For example, you could not assign logical switch 5 a fabric ID of 15, because
logical switch 3 is already assigned FID 15 in the chassis.
The default logical switch is initially assigned FID 128. You can change this value later.
NOTE
Each logical switch is assigned one and only one FID. The FID identifies the logical fabric to which
the logical switch belongs.
Before logical switch creation After logical switch creation
Default logical switch
Physical chassis
P4
P3
P2
P1
P0 P9
P8
P7
P5
P6
Logical switch 4
Logical switch 1
(Default logical switch)
P4
P3
P2
P1
P0
P9
P8
P7P5
P6
Logical switch 2
Logical switch 3