International Business Machines Corporation

Bharath B Somayaji

Henry Joseph May

Sudheer R Yelanduru

Stefan Roscher

Daniel D Sentler

Christoph Raisch

Roger Gregory Hathorn

Sriharsha Jayanarayana

Patricia G Driever

Techniques are provided for two components in a distributed Fiber Channel Forwarder (FCF) to establish a link between them at a level of operation that is mutually compatible with respect to the various capabilities offered by the two components. A controlling switch in the distributed FCF may simultaneously operate at different levels with different Fiber Channel Data-Plane Forwarders (FDFs), on a per-pair basis. The level of operation is established at the granularity of an individual capability offered by a switching element. When switching elements are upgraded, the switching elements can dynamically switch to higher or lower levels of operation for any or all of the capabilities defined per pair of switching element.

Exchange switch protocol version in a distributed switch environment

Techniques are provided for synchronizing, in a distributed Fiber Channel fabric or a distributed FCoE fabric in which FC frames are encapsulated in Ethernet frames, a controlling FCoE forwarder (cFCF) with the FCoE data-plane forwarder (FDF). The operation includes entering a recovery mode at the FDF. The FDF is modified based on a route distribution message provided by the cFCF which includes fabric-provided MAC addresses (FPMAs). The FDF notifies the cFCF of differences between the FPMAs supplied by the route distribution message with the FPMAs known by the FDF. The FDF leaves the recovery mode and sends an acknowledgement to the cFCF.

Synchronizing out-of-sync elements in a distributed fibre channel forwarder

Provided are computer program product, system, and method for determining whether a short or long message format is used to communicate zone information in a network. One large zone is implemented for end devices coupled to ports of data forwarders. A first formatted zoning distribution message is generated for the data forwarders identifying the data forwarder and ports on the data forwarders in the one large zone in response to determining that the data forwarder supports the short message format. A second formatted zoning distribution message is generated identifying the data forwarder, the ports on the data forwarders, and additional fields of information on the ports not included in the first formatted zoning distribution message in response to determining that the data forwarder does not support the short message format; and sending the generated first formatted or second formatted zoning distribution message to the data forwarder.

Using information on a supported one zone configuration setting in data forwarders to determine zone information to send to data forwarders

Provided are a computer program product, system, and method for updating zone information in a distributed switch of data forwarders. For each data forwarder, a sequence number is maintained for zone distribution messages sent to the data forwarder. A change to the ports in the network is detected comprising at least one of an allocation or deallocation of at least one port in the network. The sequence number for each data forwarder is incremented in response to detecting the change. For each data forwarder, a zone distribution message is generated indicating the at least one port allocated and/or deallocated, port information indicating each port in the network that may communicate with each other port, and the sequence number for the data forwarder. The generated zone distribution message is transmitted for each data forwarder to the data forwarder for which the zone distribution message was added.

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Bengaluru, India

Bharath B Somayaji