We turn on FCoE on the Cisco Nexus 5000 switch

Briefly about technology FCoE

FCoE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet) is a key protocol for supporting a unified data center switching matrix that allows you to consolidate the data center infrastructure, increase management efficiency, and increase infrastructure flexibility and performance. Following the course on using Ethernet to unify connections in the data center, Cisco supports the FCoE protocol in its key products, including the switch for the Nexus 5000 data center networks and the new Unified Computing System (UCS), which combines computing and network resources to support virtualization. Using the same physical environment to connect servers and storage area networks (SAN) (Storage Area Network) simplifies server and network infrastructure, as well as storage infrastructure.



Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) technology is the next step in the evolution of consolidated storage area networks. The standard specification was proposed to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) National Standardization Committee (T11) by a community of leading IT companies, including IBM, Intel, Brocade, Cisco, EMC, Emulex, Nuova, QLogic, Sun Microsystems.



This article describes how to enable FCoE on a Cisco Nexus 5000 switch.



FCoE Activation on Nexus 5000

Enabling and configuring FCoE on a Nexus 5000 switch is quite simple. To do this, you must perform 3 main points:

1. Actually enable FCoE;

2. Map (“snap”) a virtual SAN network (VSAN) with FCoE traffic in the VLAN;

3. Create a virtual Fiber Channel (VFC) interface.

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Step 1. Enable

To enable FCoE on the switch, just run the command:

switch(config)# feature fcoe



Step 2. Mapping VSAN to VLAN

First you need to decide which VSAN we will use. If we connect to an existing FC factory, for example, on a Cisco MDS switch, we need to make sure that the VSANs between the Nexus switches and the MDS are properly configured and see each other. Otherwise, the data traffic from VSAN on the Nexus switch will not reach the devices in the other VSAN on the MDS side.

I want to draw your attention to the fact that FCoE VSAN-to-VLAN mapping is a necessary step, if it is not performed, the FCoE on the interfaces will not rise (as you see later in this post). Suppose that VSANs between switches are already configured and perform the following actions for VSAN mapping into a VLAN:

switch(config)# vlan XXX

switch(config-vlan)# fcoe vsan YYY

switch(config-vlan)# exit

Replace XXX and YYY with the appropriate VLAN and VSAN numbers in your configuration.



Step 3. Create VFC Interfaces

Now we are ready to create virtual Fiber Channel (VFC) interfaces. Each physical port on the Nexus switch through which FCoE traffic will have to have a corresponding VFC interface. In short, we need to create a VFC interface with a number corresponding to the physical interface. This is not a hard condition, but in this case it will be easier for us to manage the interfaces ourselves. To create the VFC interface, execute the following commands:

switch(config)# interface vfc XX

switch(config-if)# bind interface ethernet 1/XX

switch(config-if)# no shutdown

switch(config-if)# exit



The interface has been created, but is still not working, to activate it, you need to add the interface we created to VSAN, which was configured earlier for FCoE operation in the corresponding VLAN. If this is not done, the result of the command: show interface vfc <number > will be as follows:

vfcXX is down (VSAN not mapped to an FCoE enabled VLAN)



As mentioned above, to avoid this, you need to map (primapit) VSAN to the corresponding VLAN. After successfully completing this procedure, it remains for us to only assign the VFC interface to the appropriate VSAN using the following commands:

switch(config)# vsan database

switch(config-vsan-db)# vsan interface vfc switch(config-vsan-db)# exit



VFC , : show flogi database. , FC-, - WWN- , FCoE, .