HP 8/8 Fabric OS Administrator's Guide v6.4.0 (53-1001763-01, June 2010) - Page 75

Chapter Performing Advanced Configuration Tasks 3 In this chapter •PIDs and PID binding overview 35 •Ports 39 •Blade terminology and compatibility 44 •Enabling and disabling blades 48 •Blade swapping 50 •Power management 53 •Equipment status 54 •Track and control switch changes 56 •Audit log configuration 59 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 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 binding if there is a compelling reason, and only after you have evaluated the effect of doing so. Fabric OS Administrator's Guide 35 53-1001763-01