Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v6.4.0 (53-1001763-01, June 2010)

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 209

53-1001763-01

Chapter

Managing Virtual Fabrics

In this chapter

•Virtual Fabrics overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

•Logical switch overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

•Logical fabric overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

•Management model for logical switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

•Account management and Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

•Supported platforms for Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

•Limitations and restrictions of Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

•Enabling Virtual Fabrics mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

•Disabling Virtual Fabrics mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

•Configuring logical switches to use basic configuration values . . . . . . . . . 225

•Creating a logical switch or base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

•Executing a command in a different logical fabric context. . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

•Deleting a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

•Adding and removing ports on a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

•Displaying logical switch configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

•Changing the fabric ID of a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

•Changing a logical switch to a base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

•Configuring a logical switch to use XISLs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

•Changing the context to a different logical fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

•Creating a logical fabric using XISLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Virtual Fabrics overview

Virtual Fabrics is an architecture to virtualize hardware boundaries. Traditionally, SAN design and

management is done at the granularity of a physical switch. The Virtual Fabrics feature allows SAN

design and management to be done at the granularity of a port.

Virtual Fabrics is a suite of related features that can be customized based on your needs. The

Virtual Fabrics suite consists of the following specific features:

• Logical switch

• Logical fabric

• Device sharing