Dell POWEREDGE M1000E - Manual (Page 26)

6 Access Gateway Administrator’s Guide
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Fabric OS features in Access Gateway mode
1
It is highly recommended that you disable this feature on the AG switch before connecting to a
switch running Fabric OS less than 7.1. Enable and disable CR using the portcfgcreditrecovery
command. Refer to the Fabric OS Command Reference for more information on this command.
Specific switch platforms support this feature either in R_RDY or VC_RDY mode. In VC_RDY mode,
the buffer credit recovery is supported with fabric assigned PWWN (FA-PWWN), FEC, QoS, and
trunking Fabric OS features. In R_RDY mode, this feature is supported without FA-PWWN and QoS
Fabric OS features.
Forward error correction support
Forward error correction (FEC) is a Fabric OS feature supported in the following configurations:
• Between the AG switch F_Port and a Brocade 16 Gbps HBA port running version 3.2 or greater
firmware.
• Between the AG switch N_Port and F_Port on Brocade 16 Gbps fabric switch or cascaded AG
switch.
Following are limitations and considerations for FEC:
• Supported on Brocade 16 Gbps platforms only.
• Supported by Fabric OS 7.1.0 and later.
• Enabled by default.
• A Fabric OS downgrade requires FEC to be disabled.
• Specific switch platforms support this feature either in R_RDY or VC_RDY mode.
Virtual Fabrics support
Although you cannot enable AG mode on a switch enabled for Virtual Fabrics or enable Virtual
Fabrics on an AG switch, you can connect ports on an AG switch to Virtual Fabrics.
Device authentication support
Devices use authentication as a mechanism to log in into switches only after exchanging DH_CHAP
authorization keys. This prevents any unauthorized device from logging into switch and fabric by
default.
Authentication policy is supported in the following configurations for Access Gateway switches.
Regardless of the enabled policy, the AG port disables if the DH-CHAP or FCAP fails to authenticate
each other.
• Access Gateway switch N_Port connected to Brocade fabric switch F_Port. The N-port should
enable authentication when authentication is enabled on the connected switch. This can be
done by enabling switch policy on the AG switch and device policy on the fabric switch.
• Access Gateway switch F_Port connected to an HBA. The F-port also should enable
authentication when the connected device is sending login request with authentication
enabled. This is done by enabling device policy on the AG switch.
By default, Brocade switches use DH-CHAP or FCAP authentication protocols. For authentication
between fabric switches and AG switches, FCAP and DH-CHAP are used. If an FCAP certificate is
present on the AG switch and fabric switch, FCAP has precedence over DHCAP. For authentication
between AG switches and HBAs, DH-CHAP is used since the HBA only supports DH-CHAP.