Supporting Fibre Channel over Ethernet Traffic on the ACI Fabric
ACI enables you to configure and manage support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) traffic on the ACI fabric.
FCoE is a protocol that encapsulates Fibre Channel (FC) packets within Ethernet packets, thus enabling storage traffic to move seamlessly from a Fibre Channel SAN to an Ethernet network.
A typical implementation of FCoE protocol support on the ACI fabric enables hosts located on the Ethernet-based ACI fabric to communicate with SAN storage devices located on an FC network. The hosts are connecting through virtual F ports deployed on an ACI leaf switch. The SAN storage devices and FC network are connected through an FCF bridge to the ACI fabric through a virtual NP port, deployed on the same ACI leaf switch as is the virtual F port. Virtual NP ports and virtual F ports are also referred to generically as virtual Fibre Channel (vFC) ports.
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As of release version 2.0(1), FCoE support is limited to 9300-EX hardware. |
Topology Supporting FCoE Traffic Through ACI
The topology of a typical configuration supporting FCoE traffic over the ACI fabric consists of the following components:
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One or more ACI leaf switches configured through FC SAN policies to function as an NPV backbone
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Selected interfaces on the NPV-configured leaf switches configured to function as F ports.
F ports accommodate FCoE traffic to and from hosts running SAN management or SAN-consuming applications.
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Selected interfaces on the NPV-configured leaf switches to function as NP ports.
NP ports accommodate FCoE traffic to and from an FCF bridge.
The FCF bridge receives FC traffic from fibre channel links typically connecting SAN storage devices and encapsulates the FC packets into FCoE frames for transmission over the ACI fabric to the SAN management or SAN Data-consuming hosts. It receives FCoE traffic and repackages it back to FC for transmission over the fibre channel network.
Note |
In the above ACI topology, FCoE traffic support requires direct connections between the hosts and F ports and direct connections between the FCF device and NP port. |
APIC servers enable an operator to configure and monitor the FCoE traffic through the APIC Basic GUI, the APIC Advanced GUI, the APIC NX-OS style CLI, or through application calls to the APIC REST API.
Topology Supporting FCoE Initialization
In order for FCoE traffic flow to take place as described, you'll also need to set up separate VLAN connectivity over which SAN Hosts broadcast FCoE Initialization protocol (FIP) packets to discover the interfaces enabled as F ports.
vFC Interface Configuration Rules
Whether you set up the vFC network and EPG deployment through the APIC Basic or Advanced GUI, NX-OS style CLI, or the REST API, the following general rules apply across platforms:
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F port mode is the default mode for vFC ports. NP port mode must be specifically configured in the Interface policies.
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The load balancing default mode is for leaf-switch or interface level vFC configuration is src-dst-ox-id.
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One VSAN assignment per bridge domain is supported.
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The allocation mode for VSAN pools and VLAN pools must always be static.
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vFC ports require association with a VSAN domain (also called Fibre Channel domain) that contains VSANS mapped to VLANS.