Brocade Communications Systems 53-1001761-01 manual Server connections to the Brocade 8000 switch

Server connections to the Brocade 8000 switch 3

Server connections to the Brocade 8000 switch

Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) support FCoE and Ethernet LAN communication over the same cable from the server to a CEE switch, such as the Brocade 8000 switch as shown in Figure 5. The CNA is presented to the host operating system as both an Ethernet NIC and a Fibre Channel HBA so that network configuration and server management practices do not change.

FIGURE 5 CNA protocol stack

SCSI

MPIO

TCP	FC
IP	FCoE

CNA

CEE Brocade 8000

The CNA supports CEE features required to support lossless connectivity and QoS of different traffic types. Although modification of parameters is possible with some CNAs, most adapters are set up in a “Willing” mode, meaning that they automatically accept CEE configurations for QoS and PFC from the connected switch using the DCBX protocol.

Fibre Channel configuration for the CNA

The CNA discovers storage on the FC SAN and presents LUNs to the operating system in the same manner as an HBA. The same multipathing software needed for high availability in a traditional SAN can be used in a converged network.

Ethernet configuration for the CNA

Most CNAs support some type of Network Teaming or Link Aggregation protocol to allow the use of multiple ports in parallel, to improve performance or create redundancy for higher availability. For highest availability it is always recommended that you install two CNAs into a server and connect each to a different Brocade 8000 switch.

Minimum CEE configuration to allow FCoE traffic flow

The following process shows the minimum configuration steps required to run FCoE on the Brocade 8000 switch. Treat the sample code for each step as a single CLI batch file.

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