Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Raymond C Tsai

Richard L Hammons

Lalit D Pathak

Xiaoheng Chen

Sundar Poudyal

James Parsons

Xiaocheng “Cora” Chen

Daotang Yang

A network of switches that employ Registered State Change Notifications (RSCNs) with enhanced payloads is disclosed. In one embodiment, the network comprises multiple switches coupled together, and multiple node devices each directly-coupled to at least one other switch. Each of the switches preferably provides RSCNs to other switches when a node device state change is detected. One or more of the RSCNs preferably includes a device entry having more than four properties associated with the node device undergoing the state change. The switches receiving the enhanced RSCNs preferably maintain caches of remote node device entries copied from the RSCN device entries. The device entries preferably include one or more of the following: Owner Identifier, Port Type, Port Identifier, Port Name, Node Name, Initial Process Associator, Node IP Address, Class of Service, FC-4 Types, Port IP Address, Fabric Port Name, and Hard Address. Traffic overhead may advantageously be reduced.

Fibre channel network employing registered state change notification with enhanced payload

A network of switches with a distributed name server configuration and caching of remote node device information is disclosed. The network preferably comprises a first switch coupled to a second switch. Each of the switches directly couple to respective node devices. The first switch maintains a name server database about its local node devices, as does the second switch. The second switch further maintains a information cache about remote node devices. The name server preferably notifies other switches of changes to the database, and the cache manager preferably uses the notifications from other switches to maintain the cache. The name server accesses the cache to respond to queries about remote node devices. The cache manager may also aggregate notification messages from other switches when notifying local devices of state changes. Traffic overhead and peak traffic loads may advantageously be reduced.

Caching remote switch information in a fibre channel switch

Fibre channel network employing registered state change notifications with enhanced payload

Disclosed herein are various aspects of a Fibre Channel (Fibre Channel) fabric having switches that employ Registered State Change Notifications (RSCNs) with enhanced payloads. Two types of RSCN message formats are provided, both including status information about the affected device(s). In one embodiment, a RSCN message format for inter-switch communication provides various information about the affected devices according to one of a plurality of predetermined formats. In another embodiment, a node device RSCN message format provides information about a port state, the identification of the affected port, along with the port and node world wide names and the FC-4 types supported by the node.

Registered state change notification for a fibre channel network

Caching remote switch information in a Fibre Channel switch

A network of switches that employ aggregation of Registered State Change Notifications (RSCNs) is disclosed. In one embodiment, the network comprises multiple switches coupled together, and multiple node devices each directly-coupled to at least one other switch. Each of the switches preferably provides RSCNs to other switches when a node device state change is detected. Each of the switches receiving the RSCNs preferably combines multiple RSCNs to form aggregated RSCN messages that are then used to notify directly-coupled node devices of state changes. The aggregation preferably occurs over a predetermined interval up to some predetermined limit. The aggregated RSCN message for a given node device preferably includes identifiers of only those node devices that share a common zone membership with the given node device.

Fibre channel switch that aggregates registered state change notifications

A network of switches with a distributed name server configuration and push/pull caching of remote node device information is disclosed. The network comprises a first switch coupled to a second switch. Each of the switches directly coupled to corresponding node devices. The first switch maintains a database of information about its local node devices. The second switch maintains a information cache about remote node devices, and periodically verifies that the cache information matches the database information on the first switch. The second switch preferably notifies node devices directly coupled to the second switch of state changes after notification messages are received from the first switch, and after mismatches are detected between the cache and the database. The second switch preferably responds to any queries about remote node devices by accessing the cache. In this manner, name server traffic overhead may advantageously be reduced in a robust, efficient manner.

Growing community of inventors

Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Raymond C Tsai