IBM SAN256B-6, Installation, Service And User Manual

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32 Gbps, 16 Gbps transceivers operating at 4, 8, or 16 Gbps, and 10 Gbps transceivers operating at
fixed 10 Gbps. FC ports can autonegotiate speeds with connecting ports.
v
16 10 or 1 GbE SFP+ and two 40 GbE QSFP ports. These ports allow connection of blades to IP WANs
and allow Fibre Channel and IP I/O to pass through the IP WAN using extension tunnels. The 10 or 1
GbE ports operate at 10 Gbps or 1 Gbps fixed speeds with appropriate 10 Gbps or 1 Gbps transceivers
installed. The 40 GbE QSFP ports operate at 40 Gbps fixed speed.
Extension blades have the following LED indicators:
v Green blade power LED
v Amber blade status LED
v Bicolor green/amber 40 GbE and 10 or 1 GbE port status LEDs
v Bicolor green/amber FC port status LEDs
For details on interpreting LED operation, refer to “Interpreting extension blade LEDs” on page 86.
All features are supported on this blade with no license requirements.
Extension features
The SX6 Extension blade supports the following extension features.
Note: For full details on extension blade features and configuration, refer to the Fabric OS Extension
Administrator's Guide.
v Connectivity with another SX6 extension blade or the 7840 Extension Switch.
v Multiple logical extension tunnels with maximum tunnel bandwidth up to 40 Gbps (FCIP mode) allow
for scalable connections between sites.
v Extension trunking feature allows multiple IP source and destination address pairs (defined as circuits)
via multiple 10 GbE or 40 GbE interfaces to provide high bandwidth extension tunnel and lossless
failover resiliency. In addition, each extension circuit supports four QoS classes (class-F, high, medium
and low priority), each as a TCP connection.
v ARL feature meets minimum bandwidth guarantee for each tunnel while making the full utilization of
the available network bandwidth without adverse throughput performance impact at high traffic load.
v Hardware-based compression delivers the ability to maximize throughput over lower bandwidth links
in the wide area network, optimizing the cost efficiencies of FCIP. The SX6 blade compresses FC frames
before they are encapsulated into FCIP packets.
v Key protocol features are enabled in the FCIP implementation to optimize performance of extension
over IP networks, including WAN Optimized TCP (WO-TCP), 9K jumbo frame and end-to-end Path
MTU auto discovery.
v
Hardware-based IPsec supports mix of secure and non-secure tunnels on the same Ethernet port,
jumbo frames, and VLAN tagged connections. The IPsec function is capable of supporting both IPv4
and IPv6.
v FastWrite, Open Systems Tape Pipelining and Advanced Accelerator for FICON mitigate the latency
effect of a long distance FCIP distance connection over IP WAN.
v Extension HCL (Hot Code Load) provides In-service firmware upgrade for supporting 24/7 non-stop
business operations
v Built-in WAN link tester generates traffic over an IP connection to test for maximum throughput,
congestion, loss percentage, out of order deliver, latency, and other network conditions. It helps
determine the health of a WAN link before deploying it for use.
v Fabric Vision advanced monitoring provides the following functions:
– Policy based monitoring monitors extension connectivity and WAN anomalies using multi-layer
metrics.
Port and Extension Blades
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