Brocade Fabric OS Troubleshooting and Diagnostics Guide v7.1.0 (53-1002751-01, March 2013)

Fabric OS Troubleshooting and Diagnostics Guide 23
53-1002751-01
Chapter
3
Connectivity
In this chapter
•Port initialization and FCP auto-discovery process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
•Link issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
•Connection problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
•Link failures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
•Marginal links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
•Device login issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
•Media-related issues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
•Segmented fabrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
•Port mirroring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Port initialization and FCP auto-discovery process
The steps in the port initialization process represent a protocol used to discover the type of
connected device and establish the port type and port speed. The possible port types are as
follows:
• U_Port—Universal FC port. The base Fibre Channel port type and all unidentified, or uninitiated
ports are listed as U_Ports.
• L_/FL_Port—Fabric Loop port. Connects public loop devices.
• G_Port—Generic port. Acts as a transition port for non-loop fabric-capable devices.
• E_Port—Expansion port. Assigned to ISL links.
• F_Port—Fabric port. Assigned to fabric-capable devices.
• EX_Port—A type of E_Port. It connects a Fibre Channel router to an edge fabric. From the point
of view of a switch in an edge fabric, an EX_Port appears as a normal E_Port. It follows
applicable Fibre Channel standards as other E_Ports. However, the router terminates EX_Ports
rather than allowing different fabrics to merge as would happen on a switch with regular
E_Ports.
• M_Port—A mirror port. A mirror port lets you configure a switch port to connect to a port to
mirror a specific source port and destination port traffic passing though any switch port. This is
only supported between F_Ports.
• VE_Port—A virtual E_Port. A Gigabit Ethernet switch port configured for an FCIP tunnel is called
a VE port (virtual E-port). However, with a VEX_Port at the other end it does not propagate
fabric services or routing topology information from one edge fabric to another.