Brocade Network OS Administrator’s Guide v4.1.1 - Manual (Page 31)

FIGURE 3 Distributed intelligence in an Ethernet fabric
Distributed intelligence has the following characteristics:
• The fabric is self-forming. When two Brocade VCS Fabric mode-enabled switches are connected, the
fabric is automatically created and the switches discover the common fabric configuration.
• The fabric is masterless. No single switch stores configuration information or controls fabric
operations. Any switch can fail or be removed without causing disruptive fabric downtime or delayed
traffic.
• The fabric is aware of all members, devices, and virtual machines (VMs). If the VM moves from one
Brocade VCS Fabric port to another Brocade VCS Fabric port in the same fabric, the port-profile is
automatically moved to the new port, leveraging Brocade’s Automatic Migration of Port Profiles
(AMPP) feature.
Logical chassis
All switches in an Ethernet fabric are managed as if they were a single logical chassis. To the rest of the
network, the fabric looks no different from any other Layer 2 switch. The following illustrates an Ethernet
fabric with two switches. The rest of the network is aware of only the edge ports in the fabric, and is
unaware of the connections within the fabric.
Logical chassis
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