Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 297
53-1001763-02
Chapter
14

Interoperability for Merged SANs

In this chapter
Interoperability overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Connectivity solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Domain ID offset modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
McDATA Fabric mode configuration restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
McDATA Open Fabric mode configuration restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Interoperability support for logical switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Switch configurations for interoperability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Zone management in interoperable fabrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Frame Redirection in interoperable fabrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Traffic Isolation zones in interoperable fabrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Brocade SANtegrity implementation in mixed fabric SANS . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
E_Port authentication between Fabric OS and M-EOS switches . . . . . . . . 311
FCR SANtegrity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
FICON implementation in a mixed fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Fabric OS version change restrictions in an interoperable environment. . 323
Coordinated Hot Code Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
McDATA-aware features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
McDATA-unaware features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
Supported hardware in an interoperable environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Supported features in an interoperable environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Unsupported features in an interoperable environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Interoperability overview

A mixed fabric is one with Fabric OS switches and McDATA Enterprise OS switches (M-EOS). The
interoperability mode of the switch can be McDATA Fabric mode, McDATA Open Fabric mode, or
Brocade Native mode. All switches must have the same interoperability mode set. All fabric mode
changes can only be performed when the switch is disabled or offline and any platform
management functions must be disabled. Interoperability supports enabling the switch with the
following modes:
InteropMode 0 for Brocade Native mode, which supports all stand-alone Brocade fabrics, but
provides no interoperability support.