Enabling Data Center Bridging
DCB is automatically configured when you configure FCoE or iSCSI optimization.
Data center bridging supports converged enhanced Ethernet (CEE) in a data center network. DCB is
disabled by default. It must be enabled to support CEE.
• Priority-based flow control
• Enhanced transmission selection
• Data center bridging exchange protocol
• FCoE initialization protocol (FIP) snooping
DCB processes virtual local area network (VLAN)-tagged packets and dot1p priority values. Untagged
packets are treated with a dot1p priority of 0.
For DCB to operate effectively, you can classify ingress traffic according to its dot1p priority so that it
maps to different data queues. The dot1p-queue assignments used are shown in the following table.
To enable DCB, enable either the iSCSI optimization configuration or the FCoE configuration.
To enable DCB with PFC buffers on a switch, enter the following commands, save the configuration, and
reboot the system to allow the changes to take effect.
1. Enable DCB.
CONFIGURATION mode
dcb enable
2. Set PFC buffering on the DCB stack unit.
CONFIGURATION mode
Dell(conf)#dcb enable pfc-queues
NOTE: To save the pfc buffering configuration changes, save the configuration and reboot the
system.
NOTE: Dell Networking OS Behavior: DCB is not supported if you enable link-level flow control on
one or more interfaces. For more information, refer to Ethernet Pause Frames.

DCB Maps and its Attributes

This topic contains the following sections that describe how to configure a DCB map, apply the
configured DCB map to a port, configure PFC without a DCB map, and configure lossless queues.

DCB Map: Configuration Procedure

A DCB map consists of PFC and ETS parameters. By default, PFC is not enabled on any 802.1p priority
and ETS allocates equal bandwidth to each priority. To configure user-defined PFC and ETS settings, you
must create a DCB map. The following is an overview of the steps involved in configuring DCB.
• Enter global configuration mode to create a DCB map or edit PFC and ETS settings.
Data Center Bridging (DCB) 251