HP StorageWorks 1606 HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 6.3.0 release notes (5697-0358, - Page 5

FCIP enhancements • FC traffic-Traffic can be transported over an IP network when the 1-GbE or 10-GbE ports are configured to support FCIP. Fabric OS 6.3.0 supports up to 20 FCIP tunnels on a DC SAN Director Multi-protocol Extension Blade, and 8 FCIP tunnels on the 1606 Extension SAN Switch. The FCIP tunnels on the local and remote GbE ports act as the Virtual E_Ports (VE_Ports), connecting the local and remote fabrics. Performance is optimized for FCP and FICON traffic using batching/debatching operations on all data and command frames/IUs. This prevents fragmentation of multiple 2,112-size FC frames (batch) into smaller IP frames, compared to single-frame exchanges (for example, FC frame generators). • FCIP Trunking-This is a new feature available on the DC SAN Director Multi-protocol Extension Blade and 1606 Extension SAN Switch that virtualizes two or more TCP connections as part of a single FCIP tunnel. These connections, called circuits, are configured explicitly to be part of an FCIP tunnel. Their primary purpose is to increase the tunnel bandwidth and provide failover paths in the event of a network failure. FCIP Trunking functionality and the additional TCP connections are transparent to the applications using the FCIP tunnel. FCIP Trunking requires the optional Advanced Extension license. • Advanced Compression-The 1606 Extension SAN Switch allows FC data frames to be compressed on a per-tunnel basis before they are sent over the tunnel as FCIP frames. The FC command frames and all frames generated from or destined for the CP are not compressed, even when compression is enabled on a tunnel. The uncompressed and compressed packets and bytes are counted and maintained on a per-tunnel basis. The compression ratio can be found for a given polling interval by reading the number of compressed and uncompressed bytes. The compression is performed by the hardware on a frame-by-frame basis, and is performed on FC data frames in the ingress direction before they are encapsulated as FCIP frames. NOTE: Advanced compression is not supported with Fabric OS 6.3.0, but is expected to be supported in a future 6.3.x release. • Adaptive Rate Limiting (ARL)-The DC SAN Director Multi-protocol Extension Blade and 1606 Extension SAN Switch allow an FCIP tunnel connection to dynamically change the rate at which the tunnel transmits data through the TCP connections. ARL uses the information from the TCP connections to determine and adjust the rate limit for the FCIP tunnel dynamically. This allows FCIP connections to use the maximum available bandwidth. ARL requires the optional Advanced Extension license. FCR enhancements • EX_Port Trunking-This was first introduced with Fabric OS 5.2.0. However, when a master EX_Port in a trunk group goes offline, a new area (master port) must be selected. This causes all slave EX_Ports of that trunk group to be disabled and brought online to select a new master EX_Port. The Masterless EX_Port feature of Fabric OS 6.3.0 uses the dynamic port binding capability first introduced with Fabric OS 6.2 to reassign the trunk area from the old master port to the new master port. With the master port offline condition, one of the slave ports becomes the new master port, and all of the other slave ports remain online. The new master port uses the old master port's area, and the old master port gets a new/unused area. The PID of the trunk does not change with the master port offline condition. • Adaptive Networking-New features were first introduced with Fabric OS 6.0, including FC QoS, which allows users to establish flow-based prioritization of traffic over a SAN. Fabric OS 6.3 extends QoS over FCR configurations, allowing support of QoS for traffic flows originating in an HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 6.3.0 release notes 5