Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 433
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F_Port masterless trunking 19
The DCX-4S supports trunk groups with up to eight ports. The trunking groups are based on the
user port number with contiguous eight ports as one group, for example 0-7, 8-15, and 16-23.

F_Port trunking considerations for Virtual Fabrics

Following are the F_Port trunking considerations for virtual fabrics:
•If a port is enabled for F_Port trunking, then you must disable the configuration before you can
move a port from the logical switch.
•If the user bound area for a port is configured using the portAddress command, then the port
cannot be configured as an F_Port trunk port. You must explicitly remove the user bound area
before enabling F_Port trunking.
•If you swap a port using the portSwap command, then you must undo the port swap before
enabling F_Port trunking.
•The Port WWN format in a Virtual Fabric is 2z:zz:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx. The z:zz is the logical port
number, for example, the logical port 450 will be 1:c2. The xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is based on the
logical fabric’s WWN, for example, if the logical fabric’s WWN is 10:00:00:05:1e:39:fa:f3, and
logical port number is 450, then the Port WWN of the F_Port trunk will be 21:c2:
00:05:1e:39:fa:f3.
•F_Port trunks are not allowed on the base switch.
NOTE
A base switch is a logical switch that is used to communicate among different logical switches.
•F_Port trunks enabled on Fabric OS v6.2.0 are non-disruptive to Fabric v6.4.0.
•If F_Port trunking is enabled on some ports in the default switch, and you disable Virtual
Fabrics, all of the F_Port trunking information is lost.
•The ports in a trunk group can be partitioned into different logical switches, therefore all of the
ports in an F_Port trunk must belong to a single trunk group of ports on the platform and must
also belong to the same logical switch.

F_Port masterless trunking

On edge switches, the masterless trunking feature is called F_Port masterless trunking because it
trunks F_Ports on the switches running in Access Gateway (AG) mode. If the switch is in AG mode,
the trunk ports must be F_Ports that are connected to N_Ports. The ISL trunking feature supports
N_Port connections for edge switches running Fabric OS 6.2.0 or later.
This feature keeps F_Ports from becoming disabled when they are mapped to an N_Port on a
switch in Access Gateway mode. With F_Port trunking, any link within a trunk can go offline or
become disabled, but the trunk remains fully functional and there are no reconfiguration
requirements.
The following table describes the PWWN format for F_Port and N_Port trunk ports.