McDATA Eclipse 2640 SAN, Administration And Configuration Manual

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Eclipse™ 2640 SAN Router Administration and Configuration Manual
Introduction
Introduction
You can configure
the
SAN Router ports for connecting to Fibre
Channel devices directly attached to the SAN Router. These devices,
such as servers and storage devices, are called router-attached
devices (RADs). You can also configure the R_Port to attach to fabrics
that are interconnected by one or more SAN Routers.
R_Port is a fabric extension port used to establish inter-switch links
(ISLs) between a SAN Router and Fibre Channel switches. R_Port
allows you to interconnect, zone and manage existing fabrics with
mSANs. Implementation of R_Port is FC-SW-2 compliant and can
interoperate with other FC-SW-2 compliant fabrics. The Eclipse 2640
R_Port implementation also works with Brocade's pre-FC-SW-2
E_Port implementation.
When a SAN Router is connected to a fabric (Fibre Channel switches)
through R_Ports, the SAN Router and Fibre Channel switches
exchange standard Fibre Channel information, compliant with the
standard FC-SW protocol. Additional device information is
exchanged when other configuration steps are complete, as specified
in the
SANvergence Manager User Manual
.
mSANs
An mSAN is a collection of one or more fabrics interconnected by a
SAN router, where all the fabrics are within a data center or in
different data centers that are within the metro area. An mSAN is
characterized by low latency, high quality and high bandwidth ISLs
such as those found within the data center or within the metro area
using technologies such as dark fiber, xWDM, MAN services, etc.
Eclipse 2640 SAN routing done within an mSAN is referred to as
mSAN Routing or SAN Routing within the data center. An mSAN
may be referred to as a local mSAN within the context of its own
mSAN, while all the other mSANs that it is communicating with are
referred to as remote mSANs.
Port Configuration Tips
• To directly attach a SAN Router to an Fibre Channel device, such
as a Fibre Channel server or storage, configure the ports 1-12 as
Fibre Channel (FC) ports. For details, refer to the next section,
Configuring the FC Ports for Router-Attached Devices
on page 3-4.