Dell EMC SmartFabric OS10 User Guide Release 10.5.0

Rebalance FC sessions (NPG)

The Rebalance FC sessions feature enables you to balance the FC sessions in the NPIV Proxy Gateway (NPG) mode. The NPG mode bridges Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Fibre Channel (FC). This is done by exporting the configured upstream FC connections as Fibre Channel Forwarder (FCFs) to both FC and FCoE downstream ports. When multiple FCFs are connected to the NPG-enabled switch, the Node (CNA or HBA) selects the FCF to be logged in and loads all FCFs equally.

Along with the existing load balancing done during session establishment, you can also manually trigger an ENode-based rebalancing using the management interface command. Manual rebalance is done at the vFabric level by specifying the vFabric id. The session count and link speed are used as factors for stabilizing the system. Session count of an uplink includes the count of both Fabric Login Sessions (FLOGI) and Fabric Discovery Sessions (FDISC). Link speed corresponds to the speed of the FC uplinks.

You can also simulate load rebalancing. The simulation displays the current system state and the session displacements that need to be done to rebalance the system.

System log messages are received when the system closes a session for rebalancing. The log message provides the Fabric id, VLAN Id, FCoE MAC and the reason for termination.