Brocade DCX 8510-4 Backbone Hardware Reference Manual - Manual (Page 19)

High availability
The following features contribute to the Brocade DCX 8510-4 high availability design:
• Redundant, hot-swappable FRUs, including blades, power supplies, blowers, and WWN cards
• Enhanced data integrity on all data paths
• Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) rerouting around failed links
• Integration with Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) managers
• Automatic control processor failover
• Nondisruptive "hot" software code loads and activation
• Easy configuration, save, and restore
The high availability software architecture of the Brocade DCX 8510-4 provides a common framework
for all applications that reside on the system, allowing global and local states to be maintained through
any component failure. High availability elements consist of the High Availability Manager, the
heartbeat, the fault/health framework, the replicated database, initialization, and software upgrade.
The High Availability Manager controls access to the standby control processor, facilitates software
upgrades, prevents extraneous CP failover activity, closes and flushes streams, provides flow control
and message buffering, and supports a centralized active and standby state.
Reliability
The Brocade DCX 8510-4 uses the following error detection and correction mechanisms to ensure
reliability of data:
• Error Detection and Correction over main control processor memory.
• Error Detection and Correction mechanism, which checks for encoder errors and fault isolation
(EDFI), such as cyclic redundancy checking (CRC), parity checking, checksum, and illegal address
checking.
• Power-on self-test (POST).
• Dual control processors that enable hot, nondisruptive fast firmware upgrades.
• One serial port and two Ethernet ports (on each control processor) for management and for service.
Offline control processor diagnostics and remote diagnostics simplify troubleshooting. The standby
control processor monitors diagnostics to ensure the system is operational should a failover be
necessary.
• Bus monitoring and control of blades and other field-replaceable units (FRUs).
Serviceability
The Brocade DCX 8510-4 provides the following features to enhance and ensure serviceability:
• Modular design with hot-swappable components.
• Flash memory that stores two firmware images per control processor.
• USB port on control processor blades for most tasks that formerly required an FTP/SCP server,
including software and firmware upgrades.
• Nonvolatile random-access memory (NVRAM), containing the OEM serial number, Brocade serial
number, revision information, and part number information.
• Background health-check daemon.
High availability
Brocade DCX 8510-4 Backbone Hardware Reference Manual 19
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