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Configuring FIP on an FCoE-FC Gateway

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Initialization Protocol (FIP) establishes and maintains Fibre Channel (FC) virtual links between pairs of FCoE devices. A virtual link emulates the physical point-to-point link that FC requires between two FC devices.

FIP is enabled by default and uses the default FIP settings on all FCoE interfaces that are part of the gateway FC fabric. You can use the default FIP parameter values, or you can configure FIP parameters globally or on a per-interface basis. Configuring FIP on an individual interface overrides the global FIP configuration.

You can configure the following parameters globally for the fabric and per interface:

  • FIP keepalive message transmission interval—This interval is the time period between sending FIP keepalive messages.

  • Priority—If an FCoE node (ENode) connects to more than one switch, the priority value determines the switch to which the ENode connects. The switch with the lowest priority number has the highest priority.

You can only configure the following parameters globally on an FC fabric:

  • FC-MAP—The 24-bit FCoE mapped address prefix that identifies the attached FC switch in the SAN fabric. The FC-MAP value is used in the fabric provided MAC address (FPMA) created for each ENode that logs in. This value must be the same for the FC switch and the QFX Series.

    Note:

    Changing the FC-MAP value causes all logins to drop and forces the ENodes to log in again.

  • FCoE trusted—You can globally configure all of the Ethernet ports in a specified FC fabric to be FCoE trusted. You might want to configure interfaces as FCoE trusted if the interfaces are connected to a transit switch that is performing FIP snooping. For interfaces that are directly connected to FCoE hosts, FIP snooping should be enabled, and you should not configure the fabric as FCoE trusted.

    Note:

    Do not configure interfaces with FIP snooping enabled as FCoE trusted.

    Configuring interfaces as FCoE trusted reduces system overhead by eliminating the need for filters. The total number of sessions the system can support is 2500 sessions. Sessions are defined as the combined number of VN_Port to VF_Port sessions and VN_Port to VN_Port sessions. (Although VN2VF and VN2VN sessions run in different FCoE VLANs, the session limit is a system limit, not a per-VLAN limit.)

    Note:

    A session is a FLOGI or FDISC login to the FC SAN fabric. Session does not refer to end-to-end storage sessions. There is no limit to the number of end-to-end storage sessions.

    Note:

    Changing the fabric ports from untrusted to trusted removes any existing FIP snooping filters from the ports. Changing the fabric ports from trusted to untrusted forces all of the FCoE sessions on those ports to log out so that when the ENodes and VN_Ports log in again, the switch can build the appropriate FIP snooping filters.

  • Maximum number of FCoE sessions per ENode—You can globally configure the maximum number of FCoE sessions (FLOGI plus FDISC) permitted from an ENode. The maximum number of sessions per ENode is 2000 sessions. The total number of sessions (VN2VF_Port sessions and VN2VN_Port sessions combined) cannot exceed the gateway fabric’s maximum limit of 2500 sessions.

To configure FIP options globally using the CLI:

  1. Specify the fabric on which you want to configure FIP:

  2. Configure the FIP keepalive message transmission interval in milliseconds to specify the amount of time between periodic FIP discovery advertisements for the fabric interfaces (the default is 8000 ms; the range is 250 through 90000 ms):

  3. Configure the priority value the switch advertises to ENodes in the range from 0 through 255; the default value is 128:

  4. Configure the FC-MAP value to match the FC-MAP value of the attached FC switch in the FC SAN fabric; the range of possible values is 0EFC00 through 0EFCFF, and the default value is 0EFC00:

  5. Configure the interfaces in the FC fabric as FCoE trusted (in this example, we assume that the interfaces have not been enabled for FIP snooping):

  6. Configure the maximum number of FCoE sessions for each ENode in the fabric:

For example, to configure all FCoE interfaces associated with an FC fabric called movieco_san with a FIP keepalive interval value of 25000 milliseconds, a priority of 70, an FC-MAP value of 0EFC01, as FCoE trusted, and with a maximum number of FCoE sessions per ENode of 200 sessions:

To override the global FC fabric FIP configuration for a specific FCoE interface using the CLI:

  1. Specify the fabric and interface on which you want to configure FIP:

  2. Configure the FIP keepalive message transmission interval and priority:

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