Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v7.0.0 (53-1002148-02, June 2011)

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 213

53-1002148-02

Chapter

Managing Virtual Fabrics

In this chapter

•Virtual Fabrics overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

•Logical switch overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

•Logical fabric overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

•Management model for logical switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

•Account management and Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

•Supported platforms for Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

•Limitations and restrictions of Virtual Fabrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

•Enabling Virtual Fabrics mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

•Disabling Virtual Fabrics mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

•Configuring logical switches to use basic configuration values . . . . . . . . . 229

•Creating a logical switch or base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

•Executing a command in a different logical switch context . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

•Deleting a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

•Adding and removing ports on a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

•Displaying logical switch configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

•Changing the fabric ID of a logical switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

•Changing a logical switch to a base switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

•Setting up IP addresses for a Virtual Fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

•Removing an IP address for a Virtual Fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

•Configuring a logical switch to use XISLs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

•Changing the context to a different logical fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

•Creating a logical fabric using XISLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

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. Virtual Fabrics 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