Dell PowerEdge FN I/O Module Configuration Guide 9.10(0.0)

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Name Server

Each participant in the FC environment has a unique ID, which is called the World Wide Name (WWN). This WWN is a 64-bit address.

A Fibre Channel fabric uses another addressing scheme to address the ports in the switched fabric. Each port in the switched fabric is assigned a 24-bit address by the FC switch. When the device logs into the switch fabric on a specific port with its WWN, the switch assigns the port address to that port, and the switch also maintains the correlation between the port address and the WWN address of the device on that port. This function of the switch is implemented by using a name server, a database of objects in which the fabric attached device registers its values.

FC-ID: 24-bit port address. Consists of three parts:

Domain: Address of the switch itself. There are only 239 addresses available for switches in your SAN environment.
Area: Identifies a group of F_Ports. Each group of ports has a different area number, even if there is only one port in the group.
Port: Provides 256 addresses for identifying attached N_Ports and NL_Ports.

The following sequence explains the operation for the attached N_Port:

N_Port sends a Fabric Login (FLOGI) as it requests a unique 24-bit address from the Fabric Login Server.
N_Port sends FLOGI to address 0xFFFFFE. Upon success, it obtains a valid address (FCID).
N_Port sends a Port Login (PLOGI) to inform the Fabric Name Server of its personality and capabilities, this includes WWNN, WWPN.
N_Port sends PLOGI to address 0xFFFFFC to register this address with the name server.

Command	Description
`show fc ns switch`	Display all the devices in name server database of the switch.
`show fc ns switch brief`	Displays the local name server entries — brief version.

The following configurations are applicable only after configuring the switch mode to FCF Port mode using the feature fc fport domain id 2 command. When you set Switch mode to FCF Port mode, any previously configured fcoe-map is removed.