Enable the Access Gateway (AG) feature on VDX 6730 platforms to configure FC ports as N_Ports and
map specific VF ports to these N_Ports. This allows direct connection of hosts attached to the VF_Ports
on the VDX switch with F_Ports on a Fibre Channel fabric edge switch instead of through ISL
connections from a VDX 6730 to a Fibre Channel Router (FCR). These connections can be regular or
long distance.

Through the use of N_Ports for direct connection to FC switches and VF_Port to N_Port mapping,
Access Gateway provides the following benefits:

• As ISLs between VDX 6730 switches and FCRs utilize possibly limited domain IDs to identify

switches, direct connection from VDX 6730 switch N_Ports to Fibre Channel switch F_Ports can
resolve scalability issues as the number of Fibre Channel and VCS fabrics grow.

• Direct connection from VDX switch N_Ports to FC switch F_Ports allows greater interoperability with

multivendor Fibre Channel fabrics as connection to these fabrics through an FCR is limited.

• The use of N_Ports instead of ISL connections to FCRs increases the number of device ports

available for FCoE hosts and devices behind LAG-supported FSBs connected to the VDX switch
VF_Ports. In addition, through use of N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), multiple FCoE initiators can
access the SAN through the same physical port.

After you configure a Brocade VDX 6730 switch in AG mode, all FC Ports are enabled as N_Ports.
These ports connect to F_Ports on the FC fabric. If the VDX switch in AG mode is connected to a FC
switch, the connected N_Ports should come up automatically. Devices attached to VF_Ports come up
when the fcoeport default command is executed on the individual switch interface port.

The following figure illustrates connection of eight hosts through an AG switch to a Fibre Channel fabric
edge switch.

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