53-1004106-15 Installation Guide
Brocade
®
X6-4 Director Hardware Installation Guide
Table 28: External Port to slotShow Command Port Mapping for Core Blades
External Port Number
slotShow FC Port Numbers
0
0-3
1
4-7
2
8-11
3
12-15
4
16-19
5
20-23
6
24-27
7
28-31
ICL Trunking Groups
Multiple directors can be connected through inter-chassis links (ICLs) between 4x32G QSFPs on core routing blades
installed in these devices.
Trunking optimizes the use of ICL bandwidth by allowing a group of links to merge into a single logical link, called a trunk.
Traffic is distributed dynamically and in order over this trunk, achieving greater performance with fewer links. Within the
trunk, multiple physical ports appear as a single port, thus simplifying management. Trunking also improves system
reliability by avoiding I/O retries if one link within the trunk fails.
Since each port within a QSFP terminates on a different ASIC within each core blade, an ICL trunk cannot be formed
using the individual FC ports within the same QSFP. A trunk must be formed from individual FC ports in different QSFP
ports, which must reside in the same trunk group. To form an ICL trunk between two devices, a minimum of two QSFPs
within a port trunk group on a core blade installed in one device must be connected to a pair of QSFPs within a trunk
group on a core blade in another device.
Each CR32-4 blade on the Brocade X6-4 has two ICL trunking groups consisting of the following QSFP ports:
•
0, 1, 5, and 4
•
2, 3, 6, and 7
Ports belonging to the same trunking groups are indicated with the same color border under the ports on the blade
faceplate. These colors are also applied to the port map labels on each blade faceplate to indicate ports belonging to the
same trunking groups.
For more information on ICLs and configuring ICL trunking between core routing blades on different directors, refer to
"Inter-Chassis Links" in the
Brocade Fabric OS Administration Guide
.
NOTE
You cannot configure ISLs using ports on port blades and QSFP-based ICLs using ports on core routing blades
concurrently on the same chassis. ISLs and ICLs can co-exist between a pair of chassis if the ISLs and ICLs are
in different logical switches.
ICL Cabling Configurations
The following figures show acceptable cabling configurations for the inter-chassis link (ICL) feature between QSFP ports
in core routing blades. The recommended topology is the parallel type where at least four QSFP cables connect between
both core routing blades on any two directors. This provides ICL trunking between directors, ensuring redundancy. Parallel
connections between core blades are recommended.
Following are the maximum numbers of directors that you can connect using 4x32G quad SFP (QSFP) inter-chassis links
(ICLs):
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