Implementing the Brocade Access Gateway for IBM BladeCenter

Many SAN configurations continue to grow in size and complexity. As the number of switches in the fabrics increase, the fabric management complexity also increases. SAN usage continues to grow as companies continue to require more computing resources. One of the recent technologies which addresses this issue is N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) and the Access Gateway feature of the Brocade Fibre Channel Switch Modules implements this technology in IBM BladeCenter .

N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) is an extension to a standard already defined in Fibre Channel protocol that allows a host bus adapter on a server to use multiple Fibre Channel addresses. This enables zoning and LUN masking, giving each server and virtual machine unique access to required storage resources. In addition, exclusive assignment of storage and connectivity resources to priority virtual machine, through their virtual port provides more granularity to fulfill service level agreements. Finally the ability to tear down a virtual port and reinitialize it on different blade server greatly enhances virtual machine portability for load balancing, portability and incident recovery. In short, NPIV enhances SAN connectivity, flexibility in resource allocation, and recovery.

This IBM Redbooks paper introduces the Access Gateway feature of the Brocade Fibre Channel Switch Modules and describes the technology and features of this module and the connectivity options. We go through use cases on each implementation, and identify and contrast the benefits of each implementation.

Chapter 1. Introduction and Technology
Chapter 2. Planning
Chapter 3. Implementation

Related product families

Product families related to this document are the following:

• Blade Storage Modules
• Embedded SAN Switches