FCoE - (Storage Series Part-10) Final

Fibre Channel Over Ethernet
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

- Unified Fabric = Unified Wire = Converged Ethernet = Data Center Ethernet = Data Center Bridging

- In unified fabric  - Ethernet & Fibre channel both run on common infrastructure

- FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) is control plane protocol for FCoE running between Initiator & FCOE Switch/FCoE   Forwarder(FCF)

- ENode in FCoE = N port in FC

- Virtual Fibre Channel (VFC) interface is logical interface mapped with physical interfaces. FIP Runs between ENode &   VFC using P2P Adjacency

- Virtual Port Types in FCOE

 > VN Port = N Port in FC
 > VF Port = F Port in FC
 > VE Port = E Port in FC < Used in Multi Hop FCOE
 > VTE Port = TE Port in FC

- FCoE replaces layer 1 & layer 2 tranport for FC but all upper layer FC services remains same like Zoning, Domain IDs,   FSPF, FLOGI, FCNS etc

- FIP is control place of FCoE and FCoE itself is the actual data plane

# FIP
++++++

- FIP has new Ether Type as 0x8914

- FIP is used to discover FCFs and perform FLOGI

# FCOE
+++++++

- New Ethertype 0x8906

- Max length of 2240 bytes which implies jumbo frames are required

www.t11.org/fcoe


# FCoE Addressing
+++++++++++++++++

- Fibre Channel uses 3 bytes FCIDs

- Ethernet uses 6 byte MAC Addresses

- FCoE ENode gets a Fabric Provided MAC Address (FPMA) for FCoE

- During FIP, ENode is assigned a 3 byte FCID

- FLOGI now is part of FIP

- FCF is configured with a 3 byte FCoE MAC Address Prefix (FC-MAP)

- ENode appends FC-MAP to FCID

- 3 byte FC-MAP + 3 byte FCID = FPMA

# Configuring FCOE
+++++++++++++++++++

- feature fcoe < Feature FCOE can only be enabled from Admin VDC in Nexus 7k
- feature lldp

- Create a VSAN

vsan database
 vsan 1010
 vsan 1010 interface fc1/10

- Associate VSAN to a VLAN

vlan 1010
 fcoe vlan 1010

- Configure a VFC
- Associate Physical Ethernet to a VFC

int vfc117
 bind interface e1/17
 switchport trunk allowed vsan 1010

- Assign VFC to the VSAN

vsan database
 vsan 1010 interface vfc117

- Configure physical ethernet as a trunk

int e1/17
 shut
 switchport mode trunk
 spanning-tree port type edge trunk
 switchport trunk native vlan 10
 switchport trunk allowed vlan 10 ,1010

- Activate Interfaces

int vfc117
 no shut

int e1/17
 no shut



sh int vfc117 < Look for trunking & VSAN should be up

sh fcoe database

Nexus 5k doesn't support AL (Arbitrated Loop) topology

sh system internal dcbx info interface e1/17

> Look for DCX Protocol where CEE means Gen2 or Gen2+ CNA and anything else like CIN means Gen1 CNA

FCOE traffic is marked with COS-3 by default

SAN gets 50% of BW incase of congestion and rest 50% is reserved for LAN

sh int fcoe

Further Readings:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/mkt_ops_guides/513_n1_1/n5k_ops_fcoe.html


HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE