Brocade Fabric OS FCIP Administrator's Guide v7.1.0 (53-1002748-01, March 2013)

Fabric OS FCIP Administrator’s Guide 11
53-1002748-01
FX8-24 blade license options
2
VE_Ports and FCIP tunnels on the FX8-24 blade
An FX8-24 blade can support 20 VE_Ports, and therefore 20 FCIP tunnels. There are two VE_Port
groups, numbered 12 through 21 and 22 through 31. Each FCIP tunnel is associated with a specific
VE_Port.
VE_Ports do not have to be associated with a particular GbE port on FX8-24 blades and the 7800
switch. VE_Port versus GbE port usage depends on the blade operating mode as follows:
• 1 Gbps mode: VE_Ports 12 through 21 use GbE ports 0 through 9
• 10 Gbps mode: VE_Ports 12 through 21 use xge1; VE_Ports 22 through 31 use xge0
• Dual mode: VE_Ports 12 through 21 use GbE ports 0 through 9; VE_Ports 22 through 31 use
xge0
NOTE
In 10 Gbps mode, you can also configure VE_Ports 12 through 21 to use port xge0 as a
crossport and VE_Ports 22 through 31 to use port xge1 as a crossport. Refer to “Crossports”
on page 13 for more information.
Considerations for using VE_Ports and FCIP tunnels
Consider the following when using VE_Ports and tunnels:
• Total bandwidth cannot exceed 20 Gbps for VE_Ports.
• It should be made clear if this is referring to Full Duplex (bidirectional traffic) or unidirectional.
It should be “per” VE_Port or “for all” the VE_Ports of a single FCIP engine.
• As a best practice, Fibre Channel traffic through a VE_Port tunnel should not exceed
recommended oversubscription guidelines. General guidelines include 2-to-1 oversubscription
without compression (for example, 1 Gbps over a 500 Mbps tunnel) and 4-to-1
oversubscription with compression.
• VE_Ports or VEX_Ports cannot connect to the same domain at the same time as Fibre Channel
E_Ports or EX_Ports.
FCIP Trunking capacity on the FX8-24 blade
FCIP Trunking provides load leveling, failover, failback, in-order delivery, and bandwidth aggregation
capabilities through the use of multiple FCIP circuits:
• FCIP tunnels using 1 GbE or 10 GbE ports can have up to ten FCIP circuits spread across any
GbE ports.
• You can define up to eight IP addresses (0 through 8 minus the default IPv6 “link-local”
address) for a GbE port. You can define up to 10 IP addresses for a 10GbE port and an
additional 10 addresses on crossports when operating in 10 Gbps mode.
• Up to four FCIP circuits can be configured per 1 GbE port, each requiring a unique IP address.
• Up to ten FCIP circuits can be configured per 10 GbE port, each requiring a unique IP address.
• A single circuit between 1 GbE ports cannot exceed 1 Gbps capacity.