Deploying FCoE (FIP Snooping) on Dell Force 10 MXL
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Appendix A – Basic terminology
CLI
Command line interface (CLI). This is the text based telnet, ssh, or serial type interface that will be
used for entering commands into the Dell Force10™ MXL model switch. At release the MXL is only
configurable via CLI.
CMC
Chassis management controller (CMC) is the module which controls the Dell PowerEdge™ M1000e blade
server chassis. Through this controller a telnet, ssh or serial based connection can be used to manage
the MXL switch.
FIP-Snooping
With FIP-Snooping enabled on the Dell Force10™ MXL model switch, FIP logins, solicitations, and
advertisements are monitored. In this monitoring or snooping process the switch gathers information
pertaining to the ENode and FCF addresses. With this information the switch will then place filters that
only allow access to ENode devices that have logged-in successfully. This enables the FCoE VLAN to
deny all other traffic except this lossless FCoE storage traffic.
The filtering process also secures the end-to-end path between the ENode device and the FCF. The
ENode will only be able to talk with the FCF in which it has logged into.
FIP-Snooping bridge (FSB)
With a switch configured to performing FIP-Snooping the industry term for this switch is FSB or FIP-
Snooping bridge. It is performing FIP-Snooping as described in the previous term.
FCF
FCoE forwarders (FCFs) act as an Ethernet and FC switch combined. All typical termination functions
that would occur on a FC switch occur on the FCF. FCF’s give VF_Ports and VE_Ports for their virtual FC
interfaces.
PFC
Priority Flow Control (PFC), or Per-Priority Pause is defined in the IEEE 802.1Qbb standard. PFC is flow
control based on priority settings and adds additional information to the standard pause frame. The
additional fields added to the pause frame allow devices to pause traffic on a specific priority instead
of pausing all traffic. (IEEE, 2009) Pause frames will be initiated by the FCF in most cases when its
receive buffers are starting to reach a congested point. With PFC traffic is paused instead of dropped
and retransmitted. This provides the lossless network behavior necessary for FC packets to be
encapsulated and passed along the Ethernet paths.
