Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 49
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Enabling and disabling blades 3

FA4-18 application blade enabling exceptions

The Brocade 48000 director supports up to two FA4-18 blades in a chassis. The Brocade DCX and
DCX-4S Backbones support up to four FA4-18 blades in a chassis.

FC4-48 and FC8-48 port blade enabling exceptions

Because the area IDs are shared with different port IDs, the FC4-48 and FC8-48 blades support
only F_ and E_Ports. They do not support FL_Ports.
Port swapping on an FC4-48 or FC8-48 is supported only on ports 0–15. For the FC8-32 port blade,
port swapping is supported on all 32 ports. This means that if you replace a 32-port blade where a
port has been swapped on ports 16–31 with a 48-port blade, the 48-port blade faults. To correct
this, reinsert the 32-port blade and issue portSwap to restore the original area IDs to ports 16–31.

FR4-18i application blade enabling exceptions

Note the following exceptions to enabling the FR4-18i application blade:
•You have inserted the FR4-18i blade into a slot that was previously empty or contained an
FA4-18, FC4-16IP, FC4-48, FC8-16, FC8-32, FC8-48, FC10-6, FS8-18.
If the FR4-18i blade is operational and the platform is rebooted, then after the successful
bootup of the system the blade continues operations using the previous configurations.
If a previously configured FR4-18i blade is removed and another or the same FR4-18i blade is
inserted into the same slot, then the ports use the previous configuration and come up
enabled. If you do not want to use the previous configuration, you must clear the configuration
information, remove the blade, and then reseat the blade.
If a previously-configured FR4-18i blade is removed and an FC4-48, FC8-16, FC8-32, FC8-48,
or FC10-6 blade is plugged in, then—other than the port’s EX_Port configuration—all the
remaining port configurations previously applied to the FR4-18i ports can be used. The
EX_Port configuration on those ports is disabled before the FC4 or FC8 port blade becomes
operational. When a blade is present in the slot, then any requested port configuration is
validated against the blade’s capabilities before accepting the request. Also, hot swapping
causes the ports on the FR4-18i to be persistently disabled which later need to be enabled.
NOTE
The FC4-16IP blade is not supported in either the Brocade DCX or DCX-4S enterprise-class
platform.
•You have turned on the power to the chassis and the FR4-18i blade in that slot was not active
prior to the power-on you must persistently enable the ports manually. For instructions on how
to manually persistently enable a port, refer to “Port activation and deactivation” on page 42.
ATTENTION
The ports of an FR4-18i are persistently disabled only if an FR4-18i was not previously in that
slot. You can replace an FR4-18i with another one with no change in the port states.
To summarize:
•When an FC4-16, FC4-32, FC8-16, FC8-32, FC10-6, FC4-16IP, FA4-18, FS8-18, or FX8-24 blade
is replaced by an FR4-18i blade, the current port configuration continues to be used, and all
ports on the FR4-18i blade are persistently disabled.