Cisco Technology, Inc.

International Business Machines Corporation

Badri Ramaswamy

Ramsundar Janakiraman

Kalyan Ghosh

Joy J Chatterjee

Dinesh Ganapathy Dutt

Subrata Banerjee

Vinit Jain

Daniel Gene Eisenhauer

Nilanjan Mukherjee

Gaurav Rastogi

Bradley A Benson

Cihangir M Akyol

Subrata Benerjee

A technique is provided for facilitating fabric membership login for an N_Port of a storage area network. A communication from a network node is received. The communication may include a portion of criteria associated with the N_Port. Using at least a portion of the portion of criteria, a virtual fabric identifier corresponding to a virtual fabric which is associated with the N_Port may be automatically identified. Fabric configuration information, which includes the virtual fabric identifier, may be automatically provided to the network node. A fabric login request from the N_Port to login to the virtual fabric may then be received. According to a specific embodiment, the communication may be transmitted from a network node to an F_Port on a Fibre Channel switch. When the N_Port received the fabric configuration information from the F_Port, the generating, using at least a portion of the received fabric configuration information, a fabric login request message may be generated by the N_Port which includes a fabric login request for the N_Port to login to the virtual fabric corresponding to the virtual fabric identifier. In at least one implementation, the N_Port and/or F_Port may be configured or designed to support trunking functionality.

Technique for implementing virtual fabric membership assignments for devices in a storage area network

In one embodiment, a system includes a switching processor configured to execute logic, a plurality of ports, at least some of the ports being grouped together in one or more link aggregations (LAGs), logic adapted to create at least a first virtual local area network (VLAN) interface for Ethernet traffic using transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) that is received on at least one of the plurality of ports, and logic adapted to create at least a second VLAN for storage area network (SAN) traffic using Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and/or remote direct access memory (RDMA) over Converged Enhanced Ethernet (RoCEE) that is received on at least one of the plurality of ports, wherein no SAN traffic using FCoE and/or RoCEE is assigned to the first VLAN, and wherein no Ethernet traffic using TCP/IP is assigned to the second VLAN.

Support for converged traffic over ethernet link aggregation (LAG)

A technique is provided for facilitating fabric membership login for an N_Port of a storage area network. A communication from a network node is received. The communication may include a portion of criteria associated with the N_Port. Using at least a portion of the portion of criteria, a virtual fabric identifier corresponding to a virtual fabric which is associated with the N_Port may be automatically identified. Fabric configuration information, which includes the virtual fabric identifier, may be automatically provided to the network node. A fabric login request from the N_Port to login to the virtual fabric may then be received. According to a specific embodiment, the communication may be transmitted from a network node to an F_Port on a Fiber Channel switch. When the N_Port received the fabric configuration information from the F_Port, the generating, using at least a portion of the received fabric configuration information, a fabric login request message may be generated by the N_Port which includes a fabric login request for the N_Port to login to the virtual fabric corresponding to the virtual fabric identifier. In at least one implementation, the N_Port and/or F_Port may be configured or designed to support trunking functionality.

The Switch includes a port configured to receive a command frame when installed in a switching Fabric. The frame identifies a source device and a destination device in the Switching Fabric, a command, and a read/write flag which indicates if the identified source intends to exercise read-only or write access to the destination device. The Switch also includes a processor coupled to the port. The processor is configured to trap the frame and prevent it from reaching the defined destination device in the switching Fabric if both the source and destination devices are in a read-only zone and the flag indicates that the source intends to write to the destination device. In this manner, read-only zones can be implemented in the Switching Fabric.

Implementing read-only zones in a switching fabric

Switch for implementing read only zones in a fibre channel fabric

A system and method are disclosed for transferring an enhanced LAN Emulation Client from a first LAN Emulation Server to a second LAN Emulation Server. The addresses of the first LES and the second LES are determined at an LECS. The first LES and the second LES are connected to the LECS. The addresses of the first LES and the second LES are sent to the enhanced LEC so that the addresses of the first LES and the second LES may be stored at the enhanced LEC. When the enhanced LEC determines that the first LES has failed, the address of the second LES is looked up at the enhanced LEC and the enhanced LEC connects to the second LES.

Establishing and maintaining master and standby LAN emulation server connections to provide a fault tolerant ELAN

Growing community of inventors

Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Badri Ramaswamy