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Appendix

B

Inband Management

In this appendix
Inband Management overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
Internal Ethernet devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
IP address and routing management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Examples of supported configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509

Inband Management overview

Inband Management on the Brocade 7500 Extension Switch allows a management station to
communicate to the CP through the GE ports for tasks such as downloading firmware, SNMP
polling, SNMP traps, troubleshooting, and configuration. To facilitate this communication, the
Brocade 7500 Extension Switch uses IP forwarding and IP routing to forward IP traffic through the
switch to the management station.
NOTE
You can have an FCIP tunnel set up and running on one GE port, while the other is being used for
Inband Management. Or, you can use both GE ports for Inband Management.
Inband Management is implemented on the Brocade 7500 Extension Switch only and is not
available on the FR4-18i blades. It requires having management access to the switch through the
management port for initial configuration. There must be at least one IP interface configured, on
the GE port you will use, for Inband Management.
To implement Inband Management on the Brocade 7500 Extension Switch, you must have an
understanding of implementing IP routes and subnets. The GE port that you configure acts as a
router with IP forwarding implemented to allow communication to the CP through the GE port
processors and then out the GE ports. Therefore, it is necessary to implement numerous IP routes
throughout the network to allow the communication to take place.
NOTE
IPsec is not supported over Inband Management interfaces.
Once the switch is set up with the appropriate IP addresses and routes, the IP driver will compare
the destination address to any existing interfaces when it receives an IP packet. If it does not have
an interface that matches, it will perform a route lookup for the destination address. If it returns
with a valid gateway, the packet will be forwarded to that gateway address.
NOTE
Only IPv4 forwarding is supported.