Dell PowerConnect Brocade 300 Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v7.1.0 - Page 79

Chapter Performing Advanced Configuration Tasks 3 In this chapter •Port Identifiers (PIDs) and PID binding overview 79 •Ports 84 •Blade terminology and compatibility 93 •Enabling and disabling blades 96 •Blade swapping 97 •Enabling and disabling switches 100 •Power management 101 •Equipment status 102 •Track and control switch changes 104 •Audit log configuration 107 •Duplicate PWWN handling during device login 109 Port Identifiers (PIDs) and PID binding overview Port identifiers (PIDs, also called Fabric Addresses) are used by the routing and zoning services in Fibre Channel fabrics to identify ports in the network. All devices in a fabric must use the same PID format. When you add new equipment to the SAN, you might need to change the PID format on legacy equipment. Many scenarios cause a device to receive a new PID; for example, unplugging the device from one port and plugging it into a different port as part of fabric maintenance, or changing the domain ID of a switch, which might be necessary when merging fabrics, or changing compatibility mode settings. Some device drivers use the PID to map logical disk drives to physical Fibre Channel counterparts. Most drivers can either change PID mappings dynamically, also called dynamic PID binding, or use the WWN of the Fibre Channel disk for mapping, also called WWN binding. Some older device drivers behave as if a PID uniquely identifies a device; they use static PID binding. These device drivers should be updated, if possible, to use WWN binding or dynamic PID binding instead, because static PID binding creates problems in many routine maintenance scenarios. Fortunately, very few device drivers still behave this way. Many current device drivers enable you to select static PID binding as well as WWN binding. You should only select static PID binding if there is a compelling reason, and only after you have evaluated the effect of doing so. Fabric OS Administrator's Guide 79 53-1002745-02