HP StorageWorks 2/24 FW 07.00.00/HAFM SW 08.06.00 McDATA Products in a SAN Env - Page 139

High-Integrity Fabrics Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies 3 Cascaded FICON directors and switches must support high-integrity fabrics. McDATA fabric elements must have the SANtegrity Binding feature installed and operational with Enterprise Fabric Mode enabled. High-integrity fabric architecture support includes: • Fabric binding - Only directors or switches with fabric binding installed are allowed to attach to specified fabrics in a SAN. Specifically: - Fabric elements without a SANtegrity Binding feature key are prohibited from connecting to fabric elements with an active SANtegrity Binding feature key. - Inherent to directors and switches with an active SANtegrity Binding feature key is a fabric membership list (comprised of acceptable WWNs and Domain_IDs) of the elements logged into the fabric. This membership list is exchanged between fabric elements, and an element with an incompatible list is isolated from the fabric. Membership list data eliminates duplicate Domain_IDs and other address conflicts and ensures a consistent, unified behavior across the fabric. • Switch binding - Switch binding allows only specified devices and fabric elements to connect to specified director or switch ports. • Insistent Domain_ID - When enabled through the Enterprise Fabric Mode dialog box, this parameter ensures duplicate Domain_IDs are not used within a fabric. It also ensures a fabric element cannot automatically change its Domain_ID when a director or switch with a duplicate Domain_ID attempts to join the fabric. The invalid (duplicate Domain_ID) fabric element is rejected, and intentional user intervention is required to change the Domain_ID to a valid number. For additional information about the SANtegrity Binding feature, refer to SANtegrity Binding. Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies 3-53