Managing Trunking Connections
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Trunking overview......................................................................................................... 509
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Supported platforms for trunking...................................................................................511
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Supported configurations for trunking........................................................................... 511
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Requirements for trunk groups......................................................................................512
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Recommendations for trunk groups.............................................................................. 512
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Configuring trunk groups...............................................................................................513
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Enabling trunking.......................................................................................................... 513
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Disabling trunking..........................................................................................................514
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Displaying trunking information..................................................................................... 514
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Trunk Area and Admin Domains................................................................................... 515
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ISL trunking over long-distance fabrics......................................................................... 516
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EX_Port trunking........................................................................................................... 516
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F_Port trunking..............................................................................................................518
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Displaying F_Port trunking information......................................................................... 525
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Disabling F_Port trunking..............................................................................................525
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Enabling the DCC policy on a trunk area...................................................................... 526
Trunking overview
Trunking optimizes the use of bandwidth by allowing a group of links to merge into a single logical link,
called a trunk group . Traffic is distributed dynamically and in order over this trunk group, achieving
greater performance with fewer links. Within the trunk group, multiple physical ports appear as a single
port, thus simplifying management. Trunking also improves system reliability by maintaining in-order
delivery of data and avoiding I/O retries if one link within the trunk group fails.
Trunking is frame-based instead of exchange-based. Because a frame is much smaller than an
exchange, this means that frame-based trunks are more granular and better balanced than exchange-
based trunks and provide maximum utilization of links.
The Trunking license is required for any type of trunking, and must be installed on each switch that
participates in trunking. For details on obtaining and installing licensed features, refer to the Fabric OS
Software Licensing Guide.
Types of trunking
Trunking can be between two switches, between a switch and an Access Gateway module, or between
a switch and a Brocade adapter. The types of trunking are as follows:
• ISL trunking, or E_Port trunking, is configured on an inter-switch link (ISL) between two Fabric OS
switches and is applicable only to E_Ports.
• ICL trunking is configured on an inter-chassis link (ICL) between two Brocade DCX or DCX 8510
Backbones and is applicable only to ports on the core blades.
Fabric OS Administrators Guide
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