432 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide
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F_Port trunking
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•The edge switch F_Port trunk ports are connected within the ASIC-supported trunk group on
the AG switch.
•Both switches are running the same Fabric OS versions.
•Trunking is enabled on all ports to be included in a Trunk Area (TA) before you attempt to create
a Trunk Area
•Keep in mind that F_Port trunking does not support shared area ports on the FC8-48 and
FC4-48 blades in the Brocade 48000. F_Port trunking is supported on the shared area ports
on the FC8-48 and FC8-64 in the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S.

Enabling F_Port trunking

1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account assigned to the admin role.
2. Enter the portDisable command to disable the ports that are to be assigned to the trunk area.
3. Enter the portTrunkArea --enable command to create the trunk area.
switch:admin> portdisable 0-2
switch:admin> porttrunkarea --enable 0-2 -index 2
Trunk index 2 enabled for ports 0, 1, and 2.

Disabling F_Port trunking

1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account assigned to the admin role.
2. Enter the portDisable command to disable the ports that are to be removed from the trunk
area.
3. Enter the portTrunkArea --disable command to remove ports from the trunk area.
This command does not unassign a TA if its previously assigned Area_ID is the same address
identifier (Area_ID) of the TA unless all the ports in the trunk group are specified to be
unassigned.
switch:admin> portdisable 0-2
switch:admin> porttrunkarea --disable 0-2
Trunk index 2 disabled for ports 0, 1, and 2.

F_Port trunking in Virtual Fabrics

F_Port trunking functionality performs the same in Virtual Fabrics as it does in non-virtual fabric
platforms except for the Brocade DCX. Fabric OS uses a 10-bit addressing model, which is the
default mode for all dynamically created logical switches in the DCX platform.
In the DCX platform, F_Port trunk ports dynamically receive an 8-bit area address that remains
persistent. After F_Port trunking configurations are removed from a port in a logical switch, that
port returns to the default 10-bit area address model, which supports up to 1024 F_Ports in a
logical switch.
NOTE
Because the DCX platform has a maximum of 576 ports, out of the 1024 10-bit address range,
addresses 448-1023 are reserved for the 10-bit address space. Addresses 0–447 are reserved for
assigning to NPIV/Loop ports to support 112 [448/4] NPIV/Loop ports in a logical switch with 256
devices each.