Brocade Fabric OS Administrators Guide (Supporting Fabric OS v7.3.0) - Manual (Page 70)

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. An EX_Port
cannot be connected to another EX_Port.
• F_Port -- A fabric port that is assigned to fabric-capable devices, such as SAN storage devices.
• G_Port -- A generic port that acts as a transition port for non-loop fabric-capable devices.
• L_Port or FL_Port -- A loop or fabric loop port that connects loop devices. L_Ports are associated
with private loop devices and FL_Ports are associated with public loop devices.
• M_Port -- A mirror port that is configured to duplicate (mirror) the traffic passing between a specified
source port and destination port. This is only supported for pairs of F_Ports. Refer to the Fabric OS
Troubleshooting and Diagnostics Guide for more information on port mirroring.
• U_Port -- A universal Fibre Channel port. This is the base Fibre Channel port type, and all
unidentified or uninitiated ports are listed as U_Ports.
• VE_Port -- A virtual E_Port that is a gigabit Ethernet switch port configured for an FCIP tunnel.
• VEX_Port -- A virtual EX_Port that connects a Fibre Channel router to an edge fabric. From the
point of view of a switch in an edge fabric, a VEX_Port appears as a normal VE_Port. It follows the
same Fibre Channel protocol as other VE_Ports. However, the router terminates VEX_Ports rather
than allowing different fabrics to merge as would happen on a switch with regular VE_Ports.
Backbone port blades
Because Backbones contain interchangeable port blades, their procedures differ from those for fixed-
port switches. For example, fixed-port models identify ports only by the port number, while Backbones
identify ports by slot/port notation
NOTE
For detailed information about the Brocade DCX and DCX 8510 Backbone families, refer to the
respective hardware reference manuals.
The different blades that can be inserted into a chassis are described as follows:
• Control processor (CP) blades contain communication ports for system management, and are used
for low-level, platform-wide tasks.
• Core blades are used for intra-chassis switching as well as interconnecting two Backbones.
• Port blades are used for host, storage, and interswitch connections.
• Application (AP) blades are used for Fibre Channel Application Services and Routing Services,
FCIP, Converged Enhanced Ethernet, and encryption support.
NOTE
On each port blade, a particular port must be represented by both slot number and port number.
The Brocade DCX and DCX 8510-8 each have 12 slots that contain control processor, core, port, and
AP blades:
• Slot numbers 6 and 7 contain CPs.
• Slot numbers 5 and 8 contain core blades.
• Slot numbers 1 through 4 and 9 through 12 contain port and AP blades.
The Brocade DCX-4S and DCX 8510-4 each have 8 slots that contain control processor, core, port,
and AP blades:
• Slot numbers 4 and 5 contain CPs.
• Slot numbers 3 and 6 contain core blades.
• Slot numbers 1 and 2, and 7 and 8 contain port and AP blades.
Backbone port blades
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