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Dual-hop FCoE and Virtual Connect (VC) stacking question

 
chuckk281
Trusted Contributor

Dual-hop FCoE and Virtual Connect (VC) stacking question

Tarass had a FCoE question regarding Dual-Hop capabilities in Virtual Connect:

 

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I’m trying to understand relation between VC dual-hop FCoE configuration and VC stacking.

 

Statement in FCoE cookbook doesn’t seem to be very descriptive:

Note: For Multi Enclosure Stacking (MES) environments, all corresponding ports in remote enclosures will be included in the same SUS. (e.g. selecting enc0:bay1:X1 means bay1:X1 in all remote enclosures is also included).

 

Does it mean that for SUS that has FCoE network these “locality” rules will be enforced by VC (needed uplink ports added and FCoE network forced not to use stacking links) or such configuration has to be created manually? Can we have SUS with both FCoE and non-FCoE networks in case of MES at all?

 

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Reply from Lionel:

 

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There is no FCoE Traffic on stacking links with 4.01. So this rule, when you create a Converged SUS (i.e. a SUS that is carrying a FCoE network) VC uplink ports that you select are also selected (automatically) in all remote enclosures in your MES VC Domain is to enforce the FCoE traffic to not use the Stacking links which would otherwise extend the Dual Hop FCoE scenario to more FCoE Hops. This means the FCoE traffic will always exit each and every module and only the standard Ethernet traffic would traverse stacking links.

 

So yes we can have a Converged SUS in a MES Domain but it won’t achieve much cable reduction (which is the primary purpose of FCoE Dual Hop and MES) so the benefits of MES with Dual Hop is quite limited.

 

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