beautypg.com

Dell POWEREDGE M1000E User Manual

Page 574

background image

574

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide

53-1002745-02

Fibre Channel routing concepts

24

Fabric ID (FID)
Every EX_Port and VEX_Port uses the fabric ID (FID) to identify the fabric at the opposite end of
the inter-fabric link. The FID for every edge fabric must be unique from the perspective of each
backbone fabric.

-

If multiple EX_Ports (or multiple VEX_Ports) are attached to the same edge fabric, they
must be configured with the same FID.

-

If EX_Ports and VEX_Ports are attached to different edge fabrics, they must be configured
with a unique FID for each edge fabric.

If two different backbone fabrics are connected to the same edge fabric, the backbone fabric
IDs must be different, but the edge fabric IDs must be the same. If you configure the same
fabric ID for two backbone fabrics that are connected to the same edge fabric, a RASLog
message displays a warning about fabric ID overlap.

NOTE

Backbone fabrics that share connections to the same edge fabrics must have unique
backbone fabric IDs.

MetaSAN
A metaSAN is the collection of all SANs interconnected with Fibre Channel routers.

A simple metaSAN can be constructed using an FC router to connect two or more separate
fabrics. Additional FC routers can be used to increase the available bandwidth between fabrics
and to provide redundancy.

Figure 76

shows a metaSAN consisting of a host in Edge SAN 1 connected to storage in Edge

SAN 2 through a backbone fabric connecting two FC routers.