Brocade Communications Systems 53-1002163-02 manual FCoE hardware

1 FCoE overview

FCoE provides a method of encapsulating the Fibre Channel (FC) traffic over a physical Ethernet link. FCoE frames use a unique EtherType that enables FCoE traffic and standard Ethernet traffic to be carried on the same link. FC frames are encapsulated in an Ethernet frame and sent from one FCoE-aware device across an Ethernet network to a second FCoE-aware device. The FCoE-aware devices may be FCoE end nodes (ENodes) such as servers, storage arrays, or tape drives on one end and FCoE Forwarders on the other end. FCoE Forwarders (FCFs) are switches providing FC fabric services and FCoE-to-FC bridging.

The motivation behind using CEE networks as a transport mechanism for FC arises from the desire to simplify host protocol stacks and consolidate network interfaces in data center environments. FC standards allow for building highly reliable, high-performance fabrics for shared storage, and these characteristics are what CEE brings to data centers. Therefore, it is logical to consider transporting FC protocols over a reliable CEE network in such a way that it is completely transparent to the applications. The underlying CEE fabric is highly reliable and high performing, the same as the FC SAN.

In FCoE, ENodes discover FCFs and initialize the FCoE connection through the FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP). The FIP has a separate EtherType from FCoE. The FIP includes a discovery phase in which ENodes solicit FCFs, and FCFs respond to the solicitations with advertisements of their own. At this point, the ENodes know enough about the FCFs to log into them. The fabric login and fabric discovery (FLOGI/FDISC) for VN-to-VF port connections is also part of the FIP.

NOTE

With pre-FIP implementations, as an alternative to FIP, directly connected devices can send an FCoE-encapsulated FLOGI to the connected FCF.

FCoE hardware

At a fundamental level, FCoE is designed to enable the transport of storage and networking traffic over the same physical link. Utilizing this technology, the Brocade 8000 switch and the Brocade FCOE10-24 port blade provide a unique platform that connects servers to both LAN and SAN environments.

Within this manual, any appearance of the term “Brocade FCoE hardware” is referring to the following hardware:

•Brocade 8000 switch

•Brocade FCOE10-24 port blade

NOTE

The intermediate switching devices in the CEE network do not have to be FCoE-aware. They simply route the FCoE traffic to the FCoE device based on the Ethernet destination address in the FCoE frame.

2	Converged Enhanced Ethernet Administrator’s Guide
	53-1002163-02