Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Nhan Trong Pham

Badrinath Kollu

Sathish Kumar Gnanasekaran

Vinodh Ravindran

Ganesh Kumar Murugesan

Vidya Sagar Ravipati

Blayne Rawsky

Srikara Subramanyan

Nadeem Kattangere

Vidya Renganarayanan Vineet

Vineet M Abraham

Howard Lynn Johnson

Ponpandiaraj Rajarathinam

Ethan John Cardwell

Scott Matthew Busch

Rajnish Gupta

Amod K Dani

Siming Li

A diagnostic testing utility is used to perform single link diagnostics tests including an electrical loopback test, an optical loopback test, a link traffic test, and a link distance measurement test. These diagnostics tests can be performed on trunked links and virtual channels and can be performed while QoS is enabled. Additionally the tests can be performed non-intrusively by using a dedicated VC such that regular traffic is not affected by the diagnostics testing.

Non-intrusive diagnostic port for inter-switch and node link testing

A management application can automatically coordinate the decommissioning of ports in a switch, ensuring that ports are gracefully taken out of service without unnecessary interruption of service and triggering of automatic recovery functionality that may occur during manual decommissioning of ports. Embodiments may provide for decommissioning of F_ports only, E_ports only, or both F_ports and E_ports. Where link aggregation is provided for in the fabric, decommissioning of a port in a link aggregation group may be performed if there are other operational links in the group. Decommissioning of a non-aggregated port (or the last operational port in a link aggregation group) may be performed if there is a redundant path available.

Port decommissioning

A network switch allows defining a virtual port worldwide name (VPWWN) and associating the VPWWN with an F_port of the network switch, for use by a host bus adaptor (HBA) connecting to the network switch. Both a default and a user VPWWN may be defined, with the user VPWWN typically taking precedence over the default VPWWN. A database of VPWWN associations may be used to ensure uniqueness of the user VPWWN. Where the HBA allows dynamic assignment of WWNs, the VPWWN may be pushed to the HBA. The VPWWNs may be deleted, and moved to another port as desired.

Virtual port world wide names

F_PORTs of an edge switch are logically trunking with N_PORTs of a node device outside the fabric via a trunked group of communications links. The trunked N_PORTs of the node device and the trunked F_PORTs of the edge switch are configured to send and receive frames of a particular stream across the multiple trunked links for in-order communication with the other device. The node device outside the fabric initially negotiates with the edge switch using a sequence of fabric login requests and fabric login acceptances to establish the trunked connection between the devices (and their respective ports).

Port trunking at a fabric boundary

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

Nhan Trong Pham