Brocade Communications Systems 53-1001763-02 Inter-chassis links

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 71
53-1001763-02
Inter-chassis links 4
Example of enabling a gateway link on slot 2, port 3.
ecp:admin> portcfgislmode 2/3, 1
Committing configuration...done.
ISL R_RDY Mode is enabled for port 3. Please make sure the PID
formats are consistent across the entire fabric.
Inter-chassis links
An Inter-chassis link (ICL) is a licensed feature used to interconnect two Brocade DCX Backbones,
two Brocade DCX-4S, or a Brocade DCX and a Brocade DCX-4S Backbone. ICL ports in the core
blades are used to interconnect two Brocade Backbones, potentially increasing the number of
usable ports in the Brocade DCX or DCX-4S chassis. The ICL ports on CORE8 and CR4S-8 blades
are internally managed as E_Ports. These ports use proprietary connectors instead of traditional
SFPs. When two Brocade Backbones are interconnected by ICLs, each chassis still requires a
unique domain and is managed as a separate switch.
On the Brocade DCX there are two ICL connectors at ports ICL0 and ICL1 on each core blade, each
aggregating a set of 16 ports. Thus, each core blade provides 32 ICL ports and there are 64 ICL
ports available for the entire Brocade DCX chassis. All the ICL connector ports must be connected
to the same two Brocade DCX or DCX-4S chassis.
The Brocade DCX-4S has 2 ICL connector ports at ICL0 and ICL1, each aggregating a set of 8 ports.
Thus, each core blade provides 16 ICL ports and there are 32 ICL ports available for the entire
Brocade DCX-4S chassis. All the ICL connector ports must be connected to the same two Brocade
DCX or DCX-4S chassis.
Only cross ICL group connections are allowed:
•ICL0 <--> ICL1
•ICL1 <--> ICL0
FIGURE 10 DCX-4S allowed ICL connections