Brocade Fabric OS v6.4.

0a
Release Notes v3.0

September 9TH, 2010

Document History

Document Title Summary of Changes Publication Date

Brocade Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes v1.0 Initial Release June 4th, 2010

Brocade Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes v2.0 Updated FICON Appendix, minor June 29th, 2010
corrections in Important Notes,
additional Bottleneck Detection
details.
Brocade Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes v3.0 Updates throughout document September 9th,
including 7800 port upgrade license 2010
section, Important Notes for Zoning,
FCoE, AP7420, Integrated Routing,
Bottleneck Detection and other
areas, other miscellaneous updates.
No updates to the Defect Tables have
been made.
 Copyright © 2001 - 2010 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Notice: The information in this document is provided ―AS IS,‖ without warranty of any kind, including,
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Notice: The product described by this document may contain ―open source‖ software covered by the GNU
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is included in Brocade products, view the licensing terms applicable to the open source software, and
obtain a copy of the programming source code, please visit http://www.brocade.com/support/oscd.
Export of technical data contained in this document may require an export license from the United States
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Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 2 of 47

Contents
Quick Look...................................................................................................................................................... 5
Overview ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
New Hardware Support ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Summary of New Software Features ....................................................................................................................... 5
New Feature Descriptions ............................................................................................................................... 6
FCIP Enhancements ................................................................................................................................................. 6
Encryption Enhancements ....................................................................................................................................... 7
Bottleneck Detection Enhancements ...................................................................................................................... 7
Enhanced Traffic Isolation Zones support............................................................................................................... 8
Lossless DLS Enhancements ................................................................................................................................... 8
Access Gateway Enhancements .............................................................................................................................. 8
Virtual Fabrics Enhancements ................................................................................................................................. 8
Frame Monitoring ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
FC Ping Enhancements (Super Ping) ....................................................................................................................... 9
Rolling Reboot Detection .......................................................................................................................................... 9
Security Enhancements ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Fabric Watch Enhancements ................................................................................................................................... 9
CEE Enhancements .................................................................................................................................................. 9
Deprecated Features ...................................................................................................................................... 9
Optionally Licensed Software ........................................................................................................................ 10
Temporary License Support........................................................................................................................... 12
Universal Temporary License Support............................................................................................................ 12
Supported Switches ...................................................................................................................................... 13
Standards Compliance .................................................................................................................................. 13
Technical Support ......................................................................................................................................... 14
FOS Migration Considerations ....................................................................................................................... 16
TSBs - Critical Issues to Consider Prior to Installing This FOS Release............................................................... 16
TSB Issues Outstanding in FOS v6.4.0a ................................................................................................................ 16
TSB Issues Resolved in FOS v6.4.0a ..................................................................................................................... 16
Recommended Migration Paths to FOS v6.4.0a .................................................................................................. 16
FOS Upgrades and Downgrades .............................................................................................................................. 17
Important Notes............................................................................................................................................ 18
DCFM Compatibility ................................................................................................................................................ 18
EFCM and Fabric Manager Compatibility .............................................................................................................. 18
WebTools Compatibility .......................................................................................................................................... 19
SMI Compatibility .................................................................................................................................................... 19
Fabric OS Compatibility .......................................................................................................................................... 19
Blade Support ......................................................................................................................................................... 21

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 3 of 47

 SAS Version Requirements for FA4-18 and Brocade 7600 ................................................................................. 26
Scalability ................................................................................................................................................................ 26
Other Important Notes and Recommendations .............................................................................................. 27
Defects ......................................................................................................................................................... 39
Closed with Code Change in Fabric OS v6.4.0a .................................................................................................... 39
Appendix: Additional Considerations for FICON Environments ........................................................................ 45

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 4 of 47

Quick Look
If you are already using the most recent version of the Fabric OS v6.4.0 Release Notes, the following
are the significant changes in this version:
The table at the end of these notes contains a list of the additional defects closed with Fabric
OS v6.4.0a since the release of Fabric OS v6.4.0
An appendix related to FICON interoperability has been added at the end of the Release
Notes

Overview
New Hardware Support
Brocade Fabric OS (FOS) v6.4.0 supports the following new hardware platforms:
Brocade FC8-64: 64-port 8Gb Fibre Channel blade for the DCX and DCX-4S
o Supports E, EX, F, FL and M-port types
o Supports auto sensing 2/4/8 Gbps port speed
o Needs special type of SFPs called mSFPs

VA-40FC: Virtual Access 40FC platform support on a major FOS release

o VA-40FC was originally launched on FOS v6.2.1_vfc focused release
o Also supported on FOS v6.2.2 and FOS v6.3.1 maintenance releases

Summary of New Software Features

In addition to support for the new hardware, there are several new features and enhancements in FOS v6.4.0,
including:
FCIP Enhancements
o IPsec support on FX8-24 blade
o IPV6 support on 7800 and FX8-24 FCIP ports
o VEX support on FX8-24
o DSCP Marking support on FX8-24 and 7800
o Support for up to 4 FX8-24 blades in DCX and DCX-4S
o Troubleshooting Enhancements (tperf diagnostic CLI)
Encryption Platform Enhancements
o Concurrent Disk and Tape Encryption support on the same Encryption Engine
o Disk device decommissioning support
o Redundant Key ID metadata option in data replication environments
Bottleneck Detection Enhancements
o Support for congestion detection on E, EX and F-ports. This is in addition to the latency
bottleneck detection feature introduced in FOS v6.3
o Support for bottleneck detection alerts through SNMP traps and RAS logs
o Support for switch-wide enablement of both latency and congestion bottleneck monitoring
Enhanced Traffic Isolation Zones
o Support for common devices in multiple TI zones with failover disabled or failover enabled
o Allow devices in a failover disabled TI zone to communicate with local devices (devices
attached to the same switch) that are not part of the same TI zone
o Ensure that Domain Controller connectivity between switches in a fabric will not be affected
by TI zone policies
Lossless DLS Enhancements
o Support for Lossless DLS with DPS (Exchange based routing)
o Option to specify IOD (In Order Delivery) with port based and exchange based routing policies

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 5 of 47

 Access Gateway Enhancements
o Ability to map individual NPIV WWN to N-port (also known as Device-based mapping)
o Ability to balance WWN logins from a single NPIV-port across multiple N-ports of an Access
Gateway
o Ability to configure NPIV login limit for individual ports (this feature is supported both on
Access Gateway and Switch ports)
Virtual Fabrics Enhancements
o Dynamic Area Addressing support for the Default Switch in DCX and DCX-4S
Security Enhancements
o Support FCAP authentication using third-party self signed certificates

Fabric Watch Enhancements

o New non-menu-driven CLI thConfig to configure thresholds for Fabric Watch classes
FCoE/CEE Enhancements
o Support for IGMP snooping functionality on Brocade 8000 and FCOE10-24 blade
RAS/Diagnostics/Troubleshooting Enhancements
o Frame Monitoring
Ability to monitor individual frame types such as SCSI Reservation, Basic Accept,
Basic Reject, SCSI READ, SCSI Write, etc. and configure thresholds via fmConfig and
thConfig CLIs
o Super Ping
Enhancements to the FC ping functionality to provide more coverage of multiple data
paths that exist between a source domain and destination device
o Rolling Reboot Detection (RRD)
Ability to detect unexpected continuous reboot condition of switches

New Feature Descriptions

FCIP Enhancements
The following FCIP related enhancements are made in FOS v6.4.0:
IPsec support on FX8-24 blade
FOS v6.4.0 adds IPsec support for the FCIP tunnels on FX8-24 blade. IPsec is supported on the FCIP
tunnels configured on 1GbE and 10GbE ports of the FX8-24 blade.
IPv6 support on 7800 and FX8-24 FCIP ports
FOS v6.4.0 adds IPv6 support for 1GbE/10GbE FCIP ports on the FX8-24 blade and on the 1GbE ports
on the 7800 platform.
VEX support on FX8-24
FOS v6.4.0 release adds support for the VEX ports on the FX8-24 blade in both VF enabled and VF-
disabled modes.
DSCP Marking support on FX8-24 and 7800
FOS v6.4.0 release enables DSCP marking support on FX8-24 blade and 7800 platform. The
Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) is a way of classifying traffic to allow network administrators
to determine the per-hop behavior of any given IP packet.
Support for four FX8-24 blades per chassis
FOS v6.4.0 has increased the support for the maximum number of FX8-24 blades supported in a
DCX/DCX-4S chassis from 2 to 4.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 6 of 47

 Troubleshooting Enhancements - New tperf diagnostic CLI
FOS v6.4.0 adds support for a new FCIP diagnostic CLI tperf. This tperf CLI can be used to determine
tunnel characteristics, generate High, Medium, Low priority traffics , generate random traffic patterns,
enable payload CRC checks, test with different PDU sizes, etc.

Encryption Enhancements
The following software enhancements are made to the Encryption platforms (BES and FS8-18) in FOS v6.4.0:
Concurrent Disk and Tape Encryption support on the same Encryption Engine
This feature allows users to configure disk and tape containers on the same Encryption Engine (EE). In
pre-FOS v6.4.0, users needed to dedicate an Encryption Engine either for disk encryption or tape
encryption. This restriction is lifted in FOS v6.4.0. However, users must note that the encryption
performance could be lower when both disk and tape encryptions are concurrently performed on the
same Encryption Engine, when compared to a scenario where an Encryption Engine would be
performing either disk or tape encryption exclusively.
Disk device decommissioning support
This feature provides the ability to render all encrypted data on a disk to be made
irrecoverable before a disk is decommissioned. This is achieved by ensuring that
the encrypted data on a disk cannot be decrypted by any means.
Redundant Key ID metadata option in data replication environments
FOS v6.4.0 has been enhanced to perform key recovery operation in data
replication environments.

Bottleneck Detection Enhancements

FOS v6.4.0 enhances bottleneck detection capability by adding support for congestion detection at E, Ex and F
ports. Bottleneck monitoring configuration has been greatly simplified in FOS v6.4.0 by allowing switch-level
enablement of this feature for both latency and congestion bottleneck monitoring. New enhancements allow
users to configure separate thresholds for detecting latency bottleneck and congestion bottleneck conditions.
Bottleneck monitoring alerts can be configured on a per port basis and are delivered through SNMP traps and
RAS logs.

FOS v6.3.1b introduced several changes and enhancements that are also included in FOS v6.4. These
changes are not fully documented in existing Admin Guides or other materials but will be captured in future
documentation and existing documentation updates and revisions. A brief summary of these enhancements
follows:
General improvements to Bottleneck Detection on both 4G and 8G platforms including improved
accuracy on reporting latency and reporting of latency values in Bottleneck Detection events.
New option to configure the switch ―edge hold time,‖ allowing the switch to timeout frames for F_Ports
sooner than for E_Ports. Proper use of this capability (disabled by default) reduces the likelihood of
devices with high latencies causing frame drops in the core of the fabric and impacting other
unrelated flows. Details on usage and recommended settings will be available in separate
documentation.
Support for Class 3 frame transmit (Tx) timeout discard counters on 4G platforms (previously 4G
platforms only supported receive (Rx) timeout counters, reference Fabric Watch Administrator’s Guide
for details on use and configuration).

The Bottleneck Detection feature does not need any additional license and is available on all 4G and 8G
capable platforms.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 7 of 47

Enhanced Traffic Isolation Zones support
Several enhancements are made to the TI zone functionality in FOS v6.4.0. Though these enhancements are
mainly targeted for FICON environments, they can be used in both FICON and Open Systems environments.
These changes include:
Allow same device ports to be part of multiple TI zones with failover disabled or failover enabled.
Allow devices in a failover disabled TI zone to communicate with local devices (devices attached to the
same switch) that are not part of the same TI zone.
Ensure that Domain Controller connectivity between switches in a fabric will not be affected by TI zone
policies.

Lossless DLS Enhancements

Lossless DLS enables Dynamic Load Sharing for optimal utilization of the ISLs without causing any
frame loss. Note that ―No frame loss‖ can be guaranteed only when a new additional path is used to
do load rebalance. ―No frame loss‖ cannot be guaranteed on an existing data path that encounters
failure.
FOS v6.4.0 adds support for the Lossless DLS with DPS (Exchange based routing). The In Order
Delivery (IOD) capability can be enabled optionally for both Port Based Routing and Exchange Based
Routing policies. In pre-FOSv6.4.0 Lossless DLS feature was supported only for Port Based Routing
and IOD was always enabled.

Access Gateway Enhancements

The following enhancements are made to the Access Gateway functionality in FOS v6.4.0:
Device-based Mapping
This feature allows mapping of individual NPIV logins to individual N-ports of an Access Gateway. Even
if an NPIV device logs in through a different F-port of an Access Gateway it stays mapped to the same
N-port. This feature also supports the N-port failover policy.

WWN to N-port Load Balancing

FOS v6.4.0 implements a new WWN to N-port load balancing policy for Access Gateway. When
enabled, this policy allows future allows NPIV logins to be automatically distributed uniformly within a
port group.
Individual Port Level NPIV Limit Configuration
In FOS v6.4.0 individual ports can be configured with unique NPIV login limits. This feature provides
more flexibility to deploy Virtual Machines based on real world needs by allowing more NPIV logins
through some ports than others. This feature is supported in both Access Gateway and Switch modes.

Virtual Fabrics Enhancements

FOS v6.4.0 adds support for the Dynamic Area Addressing for the Default Switch in DCX and DCX-4S when VF
is enabled. This enables several capabilities in the Default Switch in DCX and DCX-4S which could not be
supported in pre-FOS v6.4.0 releases. These capabilities include ability to assign any area to a port without
doing portswap, support for WWN based PID assignment in the Default Switch, port mirroring support for
devices directly attached to FC8-48 and FC8-64 ports in the Default Switch and maximum NPIV limit support of
255 devices per port for FC8-48 and FC8-64 ports within the Default Switch.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 8 of 47

RAS/Diagnostics/Troubleshooting Enhancements
Frame Monitoring
This feature enhances configuration of existing filter based monitors supported by APM (Advanced
Performance Monitor) and Fabric Watch monitoring for filter based monitors. It provides a common interface
fmConfig for defining frame monitors and configuring thresholds, and alerts for individual frame types. This
feature allows users to monitor various types of frames such as SCSI Reservation, Basic Accept, SCSI Read,
SCSI Write, etc. Alerting is supported via RASLOGs, SNMP traps and email alerts.
FC Ping Enhancements (Super Ping)
FOS v6.4.0 enhances the FC ping functionality to run sanity tests (ping) all data paths between a source
domain and destination device.

Rolling Reboot Detection

FOS v6.4.0 implements the ability detect rolling reboot condition. Rolling reboot is an extremely rare and
unexpected reboot condition where a switch reboots continuously. Once Rolling Reboot condition is detected,
system stops booting FOS and enables users to login to the switch and gather supportsave information for
failure analysis.

Security Enhancements
FOS v6.4.0 adds support for FCAP authentication using third-party self signed certificates. Starting with FOS
v6.4.0 both Brocade issued certificates and/or third-party self signed certificates can be used for FCAP
authentication. Prior to FOS v6.4.0 only Brocade issued certificates were supported.

Fabric Watch Enhancements

 FOS v6.4.0 introduces a new non-menu-driven CLI thConfig to configure thresholds for Fabric,
Security, SFP, Filter and EE classes. The functionality supported by the thConfig CLI is equivalent
fwConfigure CLI except that fwConfigure is menu driven. Users are encouraged to use thConfig CLI as
fwConfigure CLI will be deprecated in future releases.
 Sysmonitor CLI has been enhanced to support flash and temperature monitoring in FOS v6.4.0.

CEE Enhancements
FOS v6.4.0 adds support for IGMP snooping functionality on Brocade 8000 and FCOE10-24 blade. This
implementation supports IPv4 version of IGMP v1/v2. IGMP Snooping allows multicast data to be forwarded to
only interested member ports of a VLAN.

Deprecated Features
 FAL API
FOS v6.4.0 no longer includes FAL API support. Equivalent functionality is available through the
following SMI-S agents:
o SMI-S 120.11.0
o DCFM 10.4 Professional Plus and DCFM 10.4 Enterprise editions.
Option to install only SMI-S without DCFM client capabilities is also supported.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 9 of 47

Optionally Licensed Software
There are no new licenses introduced in FOS v6.4.0. Optionally licensed features in Fabric OS v6.4.0 include:
Brocade Ports on Demand — Allows customers to instantly scale the fabric by provisioning additional
ports via license key upgrade (applies to select models of switches).
Brocade Extended Fabrics — Provides greater than 10km of switched fabric connectivity at full
bandwidth over long distances (depending on platform this can be up to 3000km).
Brocade ISL Trunking — Provides the ability to aggregate multiple physical links into one logical link for
enhanced network performance and fault tolerance. Also includes Access Gateway ISL Trunking on
those products that support Access Gateway deployment.
Brocade Advanced Performance Monitoring — Enables performance monitoring of networked storage
resources. This license includes the TopTalkers feature.
High Performance Extension over FCIP/FC (formerly known as ―FC-IP Services‖) (For the FR4-18i blade
and Brocade 7500) — This license key also includes the FC-FastWrite feature and IPsec capabilities.
Brocade Accelerator for FICON – This license enables unique FICON emulation support for IBM’s
Global Mirror (formerly XRC) application (including Hitachi Data Systems HXRC and EMC’s XRC) as well
as Tape Pipelining for all FICON tape and virtual tape systems to significantly improve XRC and tape
backup/recovery performance over virtually unlimited distance for 7500, upgraded 7500E and FR4-
18i.
Brocade Fabric Watch — Monitors mission-critical switch operations. Fabric Watch also includes Port
Fencing capabilities.
FICON Management Server — Also known as ―CUP‖ (Control Unit Port), enables host-control of
switches in Mainframe environments.
ICL 16-link, or Inter Chassis Links – This license provides dedicated high-bandwidth links between two
Brocade DCX chassis, without consuming valuable front-end 8Gb ports. Each chassis must have the
16-link ICL license installed in order to enable the full 16-link ICL connections. (Available on the DCX
only, previously known as simply the ―ICL License‖ for DCX.)
ICL 8-Link, or Inter Chassis Links – This license activates all eight links on ICL ports on a DCX-4S
chassis or half of the ICL bandwidth for each ICL port on the DCX platform by enabling only eight links
out of the sixteen links available. This allows users to purchase half the bandwidth of DCX ICL ports
initially and upgrade with an additional 8-link license to utilize the full ICL bandwidth at a later time.
This license is also useful for environments that wish to create ICL connections between a DCX and a
DCX-4S, the latter of which cannot support more than 8 links on an ICL port. Available on the DCX-4S
and DCX platforms only (This license replaces the original ICL license for the DCX-4S).
Enhanced Group Management — This license, available only on the DCX, DCX-4S and other 8G
platforms, enables full management of the device in a datacenter fabric with deeper element
management functionality and greater management task aggregation throughout the environment.
This license is used in conjunction with Brocade’s Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) application
software.
Adaptive Networking — Adaptive Networking provides a rich framework of capability allowing a user to
ensure high priority connections obtain the network resources necessary for optimum performance,
even in congested environments. The QoS SID/DID Prioritization and Ingress Rate Limiting features
are the first components of this license, and are fully available on all 8G platforms.
Integrated Routing — This license allows ports in a DCX, DCX-4S, 5300, 5100, VA-40FC (in switch
mode), 7800 or Brocade Encryption Switch to be configured as EX_Ports or VEX_Ports supporting
Fibre Channel Routing. This eliminates the need to add an FR4-18i blade or use the 7500 for FCR
purposes, and also provides double the bandwidth for each FCR connection (when connected to
another 8G-capable port).

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 10 of 47

 7500E Upgrade (For the Brocade 7500E only) — This license allows customers to upgrade a 4-port (2
FC ports and 2 GE ports) 7500E base to a full 18-port (16 FC ports and 2 GE ports) 7500
configuration and feature capability. The upgraded 7500E includes the complete High Performance
Extension license feature set.
Encryption Performance Upgrade — This license provides additional encryption processing power. For
the Brocade Encryption Switch or a DCX/DCX-4S, the Encryption Performance License can be installed
to enable full encryption processing power on the BES or on all FS8-18 blades installed in the
DCX/DCX-4S chassis.
DataFort Compatibility — This license is required on the Brocade Encryption Switch/DCX/DCX-4S with
FS8-18 blade(s) to read & decrypt NetApp DataFort-encrypted disk and tape LUNs. DataFort
Compatibility License is also required on the Brocade Encryption Switch or DCX/DCX-4S Backbone
with FS8-18 Encryption Blade(s) installed to write & encrypt the disk and tape LUNs in NetApp
DataFort Mode (Metadata & Encryption Algorithm) so that DataFort can read & decrypt these LUNs.
DataFort Mode tape encryption and compression is supported beginning with the FOS v6.2.0 release.
Availability of the DataFort Compatibility license is limited; contact your vendor for details.
Server Application Optimization — When deployed with Brocade Server Adapters, this license optimizes
overall application performance for physical servers and virtual machines by extending virtual
channels to the server infrastructure. Application specific traffic flows can be configured, prioritized,
and optimized throughout the entire data center infrastructure. This license is not supported on the
Brocade 8000.
FCoE — This license enables Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) functionality on the Brocade 8000.
Without the FCoE license, the Brocade 8000 is a pure L2 Ethernet switch and will not allow FCoE
bridging or FCF capabilities. This license should always be installed with the 8000 FC Ports on
Demand license.
8000 FC Ports on Demand — This license enables all eight FC ports on the Brocade 8000. This
license should always be installed with the FCoE license.
7800 Port Upgrade — This license allows a Brocade 7800 to enable 16 FC ports (instead of the base
four ports) and six GbE ports (instead of the base two ports). This license is also required to enable
additional FCIP tunnels and also for advanced capabilities like tape read/write pipelining.
Advanced Extension – This license enables two advanced extension features: FCIP Trunking and
Adaptive Rate Limiting. The FCIP Trunking feature allows multiple IP source and destination address
pairs (defined as FCIP Circuits) via multiple 1GbE or 10GbE interfaces to provide a high bandwidth
FCIP tunnel and failover resiliency. In addition, each FCIP circuit supports four QoS classes (Class-F,
Hi, Medium and Low Priority), each as a TCP connection. The Adaptive Rate Limiting feature provides
a minimum bandwidth guarantee for each tunnel with full utilization of the available network
bandwidth without impacting throughput performance under high traffic load. This license is available
on the 7800 and the DCX/DCX-4S for the FX8-24 on an individual slot basis.
10GbE FCIP – This license enables the two 10GbE ports on the FX8-24. With this license, two
additional operating modes (in addition to 10 1GbE ports mode) can be selected:
o 10 1GbE ports and 1 10GbE port, or
o 2 10GbE ports
This license is available on the DCX/DCX-4S for the FX8-24 on an individual slot basis.

Advanced FICON Acceleration – This licensed feature uses specialized data management techniques
and automated intelligence to accelerate FICON tape read and write and IBM Global Mirror data
replication operations over distance, while maintaining the integrity of command and
acknowledgement sequences. This license is available on the 7800 and the DCX/DCX-4S for the FX8-
24 on an individual slot basis.
Some models offer bundles that include 2 or more optionally licensed features. These bundles are defined

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 11 of 47

for each unique product, and are outside the scope of this release note document.

Temporary License Support

The following licenses are available for 45-day temporary use, with a maximum of two temporary licenses per
feature and per switch (90 days maximum):

Fabric (E_Port) license

Extended Fabric license
Trunking license
High Performance Extension license
Advanced Performance Monitoring license
Adaptive Networking license
Fabric Watch license
Integrated Routing license
Server Application Optimization license
Advanced Extension license
Advanced FICON Acceleration license
10GbE FCIP license
Note: Temporary Licenses for features available on a per slot basis enable the feature for any and all slots in
the chassis.

Universal Temporary License Support

The following list of licenses are available as Universal Temporary licenses, meaning the same license key can
be installed on any switch running FOS v6.3 or later that supports the specific feature. Universal Temporary
license keys can only be installed once on a particular switch, but can be applied to as many switches as
desired. Temporary use duration (the length of time the feature will be enabled on a switch) is provided with
the license key. All Universal Temporary license keys have an expiration date upon which the license can no
longer be installed on any unit.

Fabric (E_Port) license

Extended Fabric license
Trunking license
High Performance Extension license
Advanced Performance Monitoring license
Adaptive Networking license
Fabric Watch license
Integrated Routing license
Server Application Optimization
Advanced Extension license
Advanced FICON Acceleration license
10GbE license
FICON Management Server (CUP) license

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 12 of 47

Supported Switches
Fabric OS v6.4.0 supports the Brocade 300, 5410/5424/5450/5460/5470/5480/NC-5480, 4100, 4900,
5000, 5100, 5300, VA-40FC, 7500/7500E, 7600, 48000, Brocade Encryption Switch (BES), DCX/DCX-4S,
8000, and the 7800. All supported products are qualified for Native Connectivity in interopmodes 2 and 3 for
deployment in M-EOS fabrics with the exception of the Brocade 4100 and 8000 and DCX/DCX-4S with one or
more FCOE10-24 blades.

Access Gateway mode is also supported by Fabric OS v6.4.0, and is supported on the following switches: the
Brocade 300, 5100, VA-40FC, 8000, 5450, 5460, 5470, 5480, NC-5480 and M5424.

Standards Compliance
This software conforms to the Fibre Channel Standards in a manner consistent with accepted
engineering practices and procedures. In certain cases, Brocade might add proprietary supplemental
functions to those specified in the standards. For a list of FC standards conformance, visit the
following Brocade Web site: http://www.brocade.com/sanstandards

The Brocade 8000 and FCOE10-24 blade conform to the following Ethernet standards:
IEEE 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol
IEEE 802.1s Multiple Spanning Tree
IEEE 802.1w Rapid reconfiguration of Spanning Tree Protocol
IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation with LACP
IEEE 802.3ae 10G Ethernet
IEEE 802.1Q VLAN Tagging
IEEE 802.1p Class of Service Prioritization and Tagging
IEEE 802.1v VLAN Classification by Protocol and Port
IEEE 802.1AB Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP)
IEEE 802.3x Flow Control (Pause Frames)

The following draft versions of the Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
Standards are also supported on the Brocade 8000 and FCOE10-24 blade:
IEEE 802.1Qbb Priority-based Flow Control
IEEE 802.1Qaz Enhanced Transmission Selection
IEEE 802.1 DCB Capability Exchange Protocol (Proposed under the DCB Task Group of
IEEE 802.1 Working Group)
FC-BB-5 FCoE (Rev 2.0)

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 13 of 47

Technical Support
Contact your switch supplier for hardware, firmware, and software support, including product repairs and part
ordering. To expedite your call, have the following information immediately available:
1. General Information
Technical Support contract number, if applicable
Switch model
Switch operating system version
Error numbers and messages received
supportSave command output and associated files
 For dual CP platforms running FOS v6.2 and above, the supportsave command gathers
information from both CPs and any AP blades installed in the chassis
Detailed description of the problem, including the switch or fabric behavior immediately following
the problem, and specific questions
Description of any troubleshooting steps already performed and the results
Serial console and Telnet session logs
Syslog message logs

2. Switch Serial Number

The switch serial number is provided on the serial number label, examples of which are shown here:

FT00X0054E9

The serial number label is located as follows:

Brocade 4100, 4900, and 7500/7500E — On the switch ID pull-out tab located inside the chassis
on the port side on the left
Brocade Encryption Switch, VA-40FC, 300, 5000, 5100, and 5300 — On the switch ID pull-out tab
located on the bottom of the port side of the switch
Brocade 7600 — On the bottom of the chassis
Brocade 7800 — On the pull-out tab on the front left side of the chassis underneath the serial
console and Ethernet connection and on the bottom of the switch in a well on the left side
underneath (looking from front)
Brocade 8000 — On the switch ID pullout tab located inside the chassis on the port side on the
left and also on the bottom of the chassis
Brocade 48000 — Inside the chassis next to the power supply bays
Brocade DCX — Bottom right of the port side
Brocade DCX-4S — Back, upper left under the power supply

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 14 of 47

 3. World Wide Name (WWN)
When the Virtual Fabric feature is enabled on a switch, each logical switch has a unique
switch WWN. Use the wwn command to display the switch WWN.
If you cannot use the wwn command because the switch is inoperable, you can get the
primary WWN from the same place as the serial number, except for the Brocade DCX/DCX-4S.
For the Brocade DCX, access the numbers on the WWN cards by removing the Brocade logo
plate at the top of the non-port side. The WWN is printed on the LED side of both cards.

4. License Identifier (License ID)

There is only one License Identifier associated with a physical switch or director/backbone
chassis. This License Identifier is required as part of the ordering process for new FOS
licenses.
Use the licenseId command to display the License Identifier.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 15 of 47

FOS Migration Considerations
This section contains important details to consider before migrating to or from this FOS release.

TSBs - Critical Issues to Consider Prior to Installing This FOS Release

Technical Support Bulletins (TSBs) are produced to provide detailed information about high priority
defects or issues present in FOS releases. The following sections specify all current TSBs that have
been identified as being a risk to or resolved with this specific version of Fabric OS. Please review
carefully and refer to the complete TSB for relevant issues prior to migrating to this version of code.
TSBs can be found at http://my.brocade.com under the ―Technical Documentation‖ section of the
―documentation‖ tab.

TSB Issues Outstanding in FOS v6.4.0a

Issues in the following list of TSBs are known to be potential risks to using FOS v6.4.0a and should be
considered carefully prior to using this release of code:

TSB Summary
None There are no current TSBs outstanding for this FOS release.

TSB Issues Resolved in FOS v6.4.0a

Issues in the following list of TSBs are known FOS v6.4.x risks that are not exposures in FOS v6.4.0a.
Note that the issues addressed in this list of TSBs may also be resolved in other FOS releases. Refer
to the specific Release Notes for each release to verify resolution details.

TSB Summary

None There are no TSBs currently issued for FOS v6.4 releases.

Recommended Migration Paths to FOS v6.4.0a

Migrating from FOS v6.2.x
For units currently operating at FOS v6.2.x, it is recommended to use FOS v6.3.0d, 6.3.1b (or later) or
v6.3.2 prior to migrating to FOS v6.4.0a.
Migrating from FOS v6.3.x
For units currently operating at FOS v6.3.x, there are no special steps required to migrate to FOS
v6.4.0a.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 16 of 47

FOS Upgrades and Downgrades

Upgrading to Fabric OS v6.4.0 is only allowed from Fabric OS v6.3. This policy to support only one-level
migration, which began with FOS v6.0.0, provides more reliable and robust migrations for customers. By
having fewer major changes in internal databases, configurations, and subsystems, the system is able to
perform the upgrade more efficiently, taking less time and ensuring a truly seamless and non-disruptive
process for the fabric. The one-release migration policy also reduces the large number of upgrade/downgrade
permutations that must be tested, allowing Brocade to spend more effort ensuring the supported migration
paths are thoroughly and completely verified.

FOS does not support concurrent FC Routing (EX_Ports) and TopTalkers features.

If there are multiple node EGs (encryption groups) in a fabric, please complete firmwaredownload on one node
at a time before downloading on another node.

The Brocade 8000 does not support non-disruptive hot code loads (HCL). Upgrading the Brocade 8000 to FOS
v6.4 will be disruptive to the IO through the switch.

A code load of DCX or DCX-4s with one or more FCOE10-24 blades will disrupt the traffic going through those
FCOE10-24 blades.

Disable the ports in DCX Logical Switches that use 10 bit addressing mode that have 8 bit areas in the range
0x70-0x8F before upgrading to FOS v6.4.0. Otherwise firmware upgrade will fail with an error message. This
step is necessary even if users do not plan to use FC8-64 blades after performing firmware upgrade to FOS
v6.4.0. However, if areas 0x70-0x8F are not in use this step is not necessary. Please use portAddress CLI to
find out the areas in use within a Logical Switch.
If Bottleneck detection feature is currently enabled on the switch running FOS v6.3.x, you must disable it
before upgrading to FOS v6.4.0; otherwise, frame drops may occur due to increased Hot Code Load (HCL)
time.
7800 platform and FX8-24 blade must be power cycled after upgrading from FOS v6.3 to FOS v6.4. This is
necessary to load the new FPGA image that enables IPv6 capability for FCIP links to 7800 and FX8-24 blade.
This step is mandatory even if IPv6 will not be used on the FCIP ports. Not performing this step will result in
unpredictable behaviors on the FCIP links. Please note that in the case of FX8-24, only the FX8-24 blade needs
to be power cycled and not the entire DCX/DCX-4S chassis.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 17 of 47

Important Notes
This section contains information that you should consider before you use this Fabric OS release.

DCFM Compatibility
FOS v6.4 is compatible with Brocade’s Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) v10.4 management software.
DCFM is a comprehensive SAN management application that enables end-to-end management of Brocade
Data Center Fabrics. It is the next-generation successor product to legacy Brocade management products
(Brocade Fabric Manager (FM) and Brocade Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM)).

DCFM 10.4 is available in three editions:

DCFM Professional: a fabric management application that is ideally suited for small-size
businesses that need a lightweight management product to manage their smaller fabrics. It
manages one FOS fabric at a time and up to 1,000 switch ports. It provides support for Brocade
FC switches, Brocade HBAs / CNAs, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) / Converged
Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) switches.
DCFM Professional Plus: a SAN management application designed for medium-size businesses or
departmental SANs for managing up to four physical or virtual fabrics (FOS, M-EOS and Mixed
fabrics) and up to 2,560 switch ports. It supports Brocade backbone and director products (DCX-
4S, 48Ks, etc.), FC switches, Fibre Channel Over IP (FCIP) switches, Fibre Channel Routing (FCR)
switches/ Integrated Routing (IR) capabilities, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) / Converged
Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) switches, and Brocade HBAs / CNAs.
DCFM Enterprise: a management application designed for enterprise-class SANs for managing up
to 24 physical or virtual fabrics and up to 9,000 switch ports. DCFM Enterprise supports all the
hardware platforms and features that DCFM Professional Plus supports, and adds support for the
Brocade DCX Backbone and Fiber Connectivity (FICON) capabilities.

DCFM 10.4 now includes introductory support for FOS switches or fabrics using Administrative Domains (ADs).
These details and more about DCFM’s new enhancements can be found in the DCFM 10.4 Release Notes,
DCFM 10.4 User Guide, and DCFM 10.4 Installation, Migration, & Transition Guide.

EFCM and Fabric Manager Compatibility

With the introduction of DCFM, both EFCM and Fabric Manager (FM) have been put into sustaining mode.
Consequently, neither EFCM nor FM are qualified or supported for management of switches operating with FOS
v6.3 and later firmware versions. Very basic evaluation has shown that there are significant compatibility
issues between FM and FOS v6.3, including (but not limited to) compromised functionality in the zoning dialog
and performance graphs, port enabling/disabling, and the FICON wizard. Similar issues are anticipated to be
present when managing FOS v6.4 with FM.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 18 of 47

WebTools Compatibility
FOS v6.4 is supported only with JRE 1.6.0 Update 16.

SMI Compatibility
FOS v6.4 is supported with SMI-S agent 120.11.0.
FOS v6.4 is supported with SMI-S Agent integrated with DCFM 10.4

Fabric OS Compatibility
The following table lists the earliest versions of Brocade software supported in this release, that is, the earliest
supported software versions that interoperate. Brocade recommends using the latest software versions to get
the greatest benefit from the SAN.

When using the Virtual Fabrics feature, it is highly recommended that all switches participating in a fabric with
a logical switch use the latest firmware available for those switches. All switches must be operating at
minimum firmware levels noted in the FOS Interoperability table below.
For a list of the effective end-of-life dates for all versions of Fabric OS, visit the following Brocade Web
site:
http://www.brocade.com/support/end_of_life.jsp

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 19 of 47

 Supported Products and FOS Interoperability

Brocade 2000-series switches Not supported, end of support

(December 2007)

Brocade 3200, 3800 Not supported

Brocade 3000 v3.2.1c 1 6 7

Silkworm 3016, 3250, 3850 and Brocade 3900, 4100, 4900, v5.3.2 (2G and 4G platforms) and
24000, 7500, 7500E, 5000, 200E, 48000 v6.1.0e and later 5 (4G platforms
only)

Silkworm 12000 v5.0.x 6 7

Brocade 4012, 4016, 4018, 4020, 4024, 4424 v5.3.1b, v6.1.0e and later 5

Brocade 5470 v6.3.1 and later

Brocade 5410, 5480, 5424 v6.2.0 and later

Brocade 8000 v6.1.2_CEE1 or later

Brocade 7800, DCX and DCX-4S with FCOE10-24 or FX8-24 blades v6.3 and later

Brocade DCX and DCX-4S with FC8-64 blade v6.4

Brocade DCX, 300, 5100, 5300 v6.1.0e and later 5

VA-40FC v6.2.1_vfc, v6.2.2, v6.3.1, v6.4

Brocade DCX-4S v6.2.0 and later

Brocade DCX with FS8-18 blade(s), Brocade Encryption Switch v6.1.1_enc and later

Brocade DCX/DCX-4S/48000 with FA4-18 blade(s), Brocade 7600 v5.2.x or later (DCX requires v6.0.x
or later, DCX-4S requires 6.2.x or
later)

Mi10k, M6140, ED-6064, ES-3232, ES-4300, ES-4400, ES-4500, ES- M-EOS v9.9.5 or later 3
4700 (McDATA Fabric Mode and Open Fabric Mode) 2 4

McDATA ED-5000 32-port FC director Not Supported

Multi-Protocol Router interop

Brocade 7420 XPath v7.4.1 8

Brocade 7500 and FR4-18i blade v5.1.0 and higher 8

McDATA SANRouters 1620 and 2640 Not Supported

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 20 of 47

Table Notes:
1All zoning and fabric operations performed in a fabric with products running older versions of FOS should
be done via interfaces to products running the latest version of FOS. This is particularly important for
Brocade 3XXX series switches that do not support zoning configuration for newer products.
2Other M-EOS models may participate in a fabric with FOS v6.4, but may not be directly attached via E_Port
to any products running FOS v6.4. The McDATA ED-5000 director may not participate in a mixed M-
EOS/FOS fabric.
3 It is highly recommended that M-EOS products operate with the most recent version of M-EOS released
and supported for interoperability. M-EOS 9.7.2 is the minimum version of firmware that is supported to
interoperate with FOS 6.4. For support of frame redirection in McDATA Fabric Mode (interopmode 2), M-
series products must use M-EOS v9.8 or later. For support of frame redirection in McDATA Open Fabric
Mode (interopmode 3), M-series products must use M-EOS v9.9 or later. Only the ES-4400, ES-4700,
M6140, and Mi10k may have devices directly attached that are having data encrypted or unencrypted.
4When routing to an M-EOS edge fabric using frame redirection, the M-EOS fabric must have a FOS-based
product in order to configure the frame redirection zone information in the edge fabric.
5When directly attached to a Host or Target that is part of an encryption flow.
6Products operating with FOS versions less than v5.3.1b or v6.1.0e may not participate in a logical fabric
that is using XISLs (in the base fabric).
7These platforms may not be directly attached to hosts or targets for encryption flows.
8McDATA 1620 and 2640 SANRouters should not be used with XPath or FOS-based routing (FCR) for
connections to the same edge fabric. A switch running FOS v6.4.0 should not be connected to an E-port
on an AP7420. A switch in interopmode 0 (Brocade Native Mode) with FOS v6.4.0 should not be
connected to an EX_Port on an AP7420. Please see important notes for additional details.

Blade Support
Fabric OS v6.4.0 software is fully qualified and supports the blades for the 48000 platform noted in the
following table:

48000 Blade Support Matrix

Port blade 16, 32 and 48-port 4Gbit blades Supported with any mix and up to 8 of each. No
(FC4-16, FC4-32, FC4-48), 16, 32 and 48-port restrictions around intermix. The 48000 must run Fabric
8Gbit blade (FC8-16, FC8-32, FC8-48), and the OS v6.0 or later to support the FC8-16 port blade and
6-port 10G FC blade (FC10-6) Fabric OS v6.1 or later to support the FC8-32 and FC8-48
port blades.
Note: FC8-64 is not supported on 48000.

Intelligent blade Up to a total of 4 Intelligent blades (includes iSCSI,

FCIP/FCR and Application blade), FC4-16IP, FR4-18i, and
FA4-18 respectively. See below for intermix limitations,
exceptions, and a max of each blade.

iSCSI blade (FC4-16IP) Up to a maximum of 4 blades of this type.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 21 of 47

 48000 Blade Support Matrix
FC-IP/FC Router blade (FR4-18i) Up to a maximum of 2 blades of this type. This can be
extended under special circumstances but must be
approved by Brocade’s Product Team. Up to 8 FR4-18i
blades can be installed if they are used only for FC
FastWrite or FCIP without routing.

Virtualization/Application Blade (FA4-18) Up to a maximum of 2 blades of this type.

Encryption Blade (FS8-18), Extension Blade Not supported.

(FX8-24), FCoE/CEE Blade (FCOE10-24)

Fabric OS v6.4.0 software is fully qualified and supports the blades for the DCX/DCX-4S noted in the following
table:

DCX/DCX-4S Blade Support Matrix

16-, 32, 48 and 64-port 8Gbit port blades (FC8- 16, 32 and 48 port blades are supported with FOS v6.0
16, FC8-32, FC8-48, FC8-64) and the 6-port 10G and above, 64 port blade is supported starting with FOS
FC blade (FC10-6) v6.4.0, with any mix and up to 8/4 of each.
No restrictions around intermix.

Intelligent blade Up to a total of 8/4 intelligent blades. See below for

maximum supported limits of each blade.

FC-IP/FC Router blade (FR4-18i) Up to a maximum of 4 blades of this type. This can be
extended under special circumstances, but must be
approved by Brocade’s Product Team. Up to 8 FR4-18i
blades can be installed in a DCX if they are used only for
FC FastWrite or FCIP without routing.

Virtualization/Application Blade (FA4-18) Up to a maximum of 4 blades of this type.

Encryption Blade (FS8-18) Up to a maximum of 4 blades of this type.

Extension Blade (FX8-24) Up to a maximum of 4 blades of this type.

FCoE/CEE Blade (FCOE10-24) Up to a maximum of 2 blades of this type. Cannot be

used in a chassis with other intelligent blades (can only
be installed concurrently with FC8-XX and/or FC10-6
blades).
Cannot be used in a DCX/DCX-4S chassis with FC8-64
blade in FOS v6.4.0.

Note: the iSCSI FC4-16IP blade is not qualified for the DCX/DCX-4S.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 22 of 47

 Power Supply Requirements for Blades in 48k and DCX/DCX-4S Chassis
Blades Type of 48K DCX/DCX-4S DCX/DCX-4S Comments
Blade
@200-240 @110 VAC @200-240 VAC
VAC (Redundant (Redundant
(Redundant configurations) configurations)
configurations)
FC4-16, FC 4- Port Blade 2 Power 2 Power 2 Power Supplies Distribute the Power
32, FC4-48, Supplies Supplies Supplies evenly to 2
FC8-16, FC8- different AC
32 connections for
redundancy.
FC10-6, FC8- Port Blade 4 Power Not Supported 2 Power Supplies
16, FC8-32, Supplies
FC 8-48,
FC8-641
FR4-18i, Intelligent 4 Power Not Supported 2 Power Supplies
FC4-16IP2, Blade Supplies
FA4-18
FS8-18, Intelligent N/A Not Supported DCX: 2 or 4 Power For DCX with three or
FX8-24, Blade Supplies more FS8-18 Blades,
FCOE10-24 (2+2) 220VAC Power
Supplies are required
DCX-4S: 2 Power for redundancy.
Supplies
For DCX with one or
two FS8-18 Blades,
(2) 220VAC Power
Supplies are required
for redundancy.
For DCX-4S, (2)
220VAC Power
Supplies provide
redundant
configuration with any
number of FS8-18
Blades.
For both DCX and
DCX-4S with FX8-24
blades, (1+1) 220VAC
Power Supplies are
required for
redundancy.

1 FC8-64 is not supported on 48K

2 FC4-16IP is not supported on DCX/DCX-4S

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 23 of 47

FOS Feature Compatibility in Native Connectivity Modes
Some FOS features are not fully supported when operating in the native connectivity modes for deployment
with M-EOS based products. All Brocade models that are supported by Fabric OS v6.4 support both
interopmodes 2 and 3 with the exception of the Brocade 4100 and 8000 and DCX/DCX-4S with one or more
FCOE10-24 blades.
The following table specifies the support of various FOS features when operating in either interopmode 2
(McDATA Fabric Mode) or interopmode 3 (Open Fabric Mode) with Fabric OS v6.4 .

FOS Features (supported in interopmode 0) FOS v6.4

IM = Interopmode IM 2 IM 3
L2 FOS Hot Code Load Yes Yes
FOS Hot Code Load with FCR Yes Yes
Zone Activation Support Yes Yes11
Traffic Isolation Zones1 Yes No
Frame Redirection (devices attached to FOS)1 Yes Yes11
Frame Redirection (devices attached to M-EOS) 1 Yes Yes11
Frame Redirection over FCR10 Yes Yes11
FCR Fabric Binding (route to M-EOS fabric with Fabric binding) 9 Yes Yes
L2 Fabric Binding Yes No*
DCC policies No No
SCC policies Yes4 No*
E/EX_Port Authentication Yes Yes
ISL Trunking (frame-level) Yes2 Yes2
Dynamic Path Selection (DPS, exchange based routing) Yes3 Yes3
Dynamic Load Sharing (DLS, port based routing) Yes Yes
Virtual Channels (VC RDY) Yes2 Yes2
FICON Management Server (Cascading) Yes No*
FICON MIHPTO Yes No*
Full Scalability (to maximum M-EOS fabric limits) Yes Yes
Adaptive Networking: QoS No No
Adaptive Networking: Ingress Rate Limiting No* No*
Advanced Performance Monitoring (APM) No* No*
APM: TopTalkers No* No*
Admin Domains No No
Secure Fabric OS5 N/A N/A
Fabric Watch Yes Yes
Ports on Demand (POD) Yes Yes
NPIV Yes Yes
Timer Server function (NTP) No No
Open E_Port6 N/A N/A
Broadcast Zoning No No
FDMI No No
Remote Switch No No
Port Mirroring Yes Yes
Extended Fabrics Yes Yes7
Alias Server No No

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 24 of 47

 FOS Features (supported in interopmode 0) FOS v6.4
IM = Interopmode IM 2 IM 3
Platform Service No No
FCIP (VE_Ports) Yes Yes
IPFC (IP over FC) Yes8 Yes8
M-EOS ALPA 0x13 configuration Yes Yes
VE to VEX Port Yes Yes
Integrated Routing9 Yes9 Yes
Domain Offset Support Yes Yes
239 Domain Support (available on Mi10k only) N/A Yes
Masterless F_PORT Trunking (AG connect to FOS switches only) Yes Yes
FC10-6-to-FC10-6 ISL Yes Yes
RASLOG Events on duplicate WWNs Yes Yes
Virtual Fabrics Yes Yes
Logical Fabric using LISLs (XISLs in Base Fabric) No No
Port Fencing Yes Yes
Bottleneck Detection Yes Yes
Lossless DLS No No

* indicates the feature is available but not officially tested or supported

1. Requires M-EOS 9.7 or later for redirection between devices attached to FOS switches, M-EOS 9.8 for
redirection between devices attached to M-EOS switches, M-EOS 9.9 for use in McDATA Open Fabric
Mode. Supported M-EOS platforms include M4400, M4700, M6140, and Mi10k.
2. Only allowed between FOS-based switches.
3. DPS is supported outbound from FOS-based switches. (M-EOS can provide reciprocal load balancing
using OpenTrunking).
4. SCC policies only supported in conjunction with L2 Fabric Binding support.
5. Not supported in FOS 6.0 or later.
6. Mode 3 only qualified with M-EOS switches.
7. Not on FCR.
8. Only supported locally within the FOS switch.
9. All routers (EX_Ports) must reside in a backbone fabric running in interopmode 0 only. Only edge fabrics
with devices imported to the backbone fabric or other edge fabrics may be operating in IM2 or IM3.
10. To support Frame Redirection to an edge M-EOS fabric, there must be at least one FOS switch in the
edge fabric to configure Frame Redirection Zones.
11. Only Frame Redirection Zones may be configured on FOS platforms and sent to fabrics operating in
McDATA Open Fabric Mode (interopmode 3). M-EOS 9.9 is required to support FR Zones in McDATA Open
Fabric Mode.

Note: FICON Cascaded CUP with M-EOS and FOS qualified only on select platforms.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 25 of 47

SAS Version Requirements for FA4-18 and Brocade 7600
Note: The SAS firmware version compatible with FOS v6.4.0 will be announced at a future date.

Scalability
All scalability limits are subject to change. Limits may be increased once further testing has been completed,
even after the release of Fabric OS. For current scalability limits for Fabric OS, refer to the Brocade Scalability
Guidelines document, available under the Technology and Architecture Resources section at
http://www.brocade.com/compatibility

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 26 of 47

Other Important Notes and Recommendations
Management Server Platform Capability support changes in FOS v6.4

FOS v6.4.0 no longer automatically enables the Management Server (MS) Platform capability when a switch
attempts to join a fabric that has these services enabled. This prevents a FOS v6.4.0 switch from joining such a
fabric, and ISL will be disabled with a RAS log message. To allow a FOS v6.4.0 switch to join such fabrics
msPlMgmtActivate command should be used to enable the Management Server platform services explicitly .

FCIP, FCIP Trunking and High Bandwidth (Brocade 7800 and FX8-24)
IPsec is not supported on XGE0 of FX8-24 blade in FOS v6.4.0. IPsec is supported on XGE1 and
GE0 through GE9.
IPsec is supported on FCIP tunnels that use only IPV4 connections.
FICON networks with FCIP tunnels do not support DPS (aptpolicy 3) configurations. This applies to
both emulating and non-emulating FCIP tunnels.
The maximum supported MTU size for the Brocade 7800/FX8-24 is 1500 with FOS v6.4.0.
FCIP connections are supported only between the Brocade 7800/FX8-24 and another 7800/FX8-
24. FCIP tunnels are not supported between the 7800/FX8-24 and the previous generation
Brocade 7500/FR4-18i platforms.
When multiple FCIP tunnels are present on a switch and additional circuits (and the network
bandwidth provided by those circuits) are added to an already active tunnel, there may be a short
period of time where some frame loss can occur due to the process to re-fresh the internal FC
frame routing tables in the switch. Therefore, additional circuits should only be added during low
I/O periods utilizing the FCIP Tunnel being modified. In addition, if the circuit operation
(addition/deletion) to the tunnel increases/decreases the total tunnel bandwidth, an FCIP Tunnel
(VE port) disable/enable sequence should be performed after the addition/deletion of the circuit.
This will allow the switch to adjust the internal routes to utilize the new bandwidth fully.
Switching modes between 10G and 1G is disruptive for FCIP traffic.
Keep alive timeout (milliseconds) - Valid range is 500ms to 7,200,000ms (inclusive).
FOS default value is 10000ms (10 seconds). If FICON is configured the recommended
value is 1000 ms (1 second), otherwise the recommended value is the default of 10
seconds. For impairment networks with 100ms latency and 0.5% packet loss, keep-alive
time out should be configured as 30seconds. If the local and remote circuit
configurations’ Keep Alive Timeout values do not match, the tunnel will use the lower of
the two configured values.
Software compression (available on the 7800 and FX8-24) modes 2 and 3 are only
supported in Open Systems environments.
In order to perform the following operations it is necessary to delete the FCIP
configuration on the affected ports first:
o Switching modes between 1G/10G/Dual.
o Moving VE/GE port between logical switches.

ARL (Adaptive Rate Limiting) is not supported on 10G tunnels.

―Inband Management‖ is not supported on the Brocade 7800.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 27 of 47

 FOS v6.4.0 only supports up to four 1 Gig Circuits per VE/FCIP Tunnel for the 1 gig
interfaces. A VE/FCIP Tunnel created over the 10 Gig Interfaces will be limited to 10
circuits created using IPIFs on the same 10 GbE port (and no more than 1G per circuit).As
a recommended best practice, the VE tunnel shouldn’t be over-subscribed (e.g. 8G FC
traffic over 500Mbps tunnel). General guidelines are 2:1 subscription without
compression and 4:1 with compression.
Non-disruptive firmware activation on FOS v6.4 will disrupt I/O traffic on FCIP links.
Differences between the Brocade 7800/FX8-24 platforms and previous generation
7500/FR4-18i platforms include:
o On the 7800, the GbE port does not directly correlate to a VE port
o On the FX8-24, GbE ports 0-9 or 10GbE port 1 (xge1) correspond to VE ports 12-
21, and 10 GbE port 0 (xge0) corresponds to VE ports 22-31
o The CLI syntax for the 7800/FX8-24 varies from the 7500/FR4-18i. Please refer
to the Brocade Fabric OS Command Reference document for FOS v6.4 for
details

Under Traffic Isolation Zone, configurations with fail over enabled, Non-TI zone traffic will use the
dedicated path if no other E or VE paths through the fabric exist, or if the non-dedicated paths are
not the shortest paths. (A higher bandwidth tunnel with multiple circuits will become shortest
path compared to a single tunnel).
A VE/VEX Tunnel and E/EX FC port cannot connect to the same domain at the same time.
The recommended Keep Alive Timeout must be the same on tunnel/circuits on the switches on
both sides of a link.
Latency measurements supported on FCIP Tunnels (Tested limit under FOS v6.3.1):
o 1GbE - 200ms round trip time and 1% Loss
o 10GbE – 100ms round trip and 0.1% Loss

Brocade 7800 supports Optical and Copper Media types on GE0 and GE1 interfaces. Copper
Media type is default on GE0/GE1 ports and does not support auto-sense functions.

After inserting a 4G SFP in GE ports of an FX8-24 blade or 7800 switch, sometimes ―sfpshow‖
output might display ―Can not read serial data!‖ . Removing and re-inserting the SFP should
resolve this issue. It is recommended that users perform sfpshow immediately after inserting the
SFP and ensure SFP is seated properly before connecting the cables.

When running FOS v6.4.0, if any of the following features are enabled in the FCIP configuration, a
downgrade operation will be blocked until the features are removed from the FCIP config:
o IPv6
o IPSec on the FX8-24
o DSCP Markings
o Advanced Compression options 2 and 3 on the FX8-24
o VEX ports on the FX8-24

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 28 of 47

FCoE/CEE (Brocade 8000 and FCOE10-24)
Configupload or configdownload operations attempted on a Brocade 8000 switch will fail with an
error message if that switch does not have an FCoE license installed and is running a firmware
version prior to FOS v6.4.0c. Please upgrade the firmware to FOS v6.4.0c or later to overcome
this limitation. (Defect 313907)
The Brocade 8000 balances the FCoE bandwidth across all six port groups (each port group
contains four ports). To get optimum performance for FCoE traffic it is recommended that the
user distribute server CNA connections across these six port groups.

Hot plugging a CP with firmware level less than FOS v6.3.0 into a DCX or DCX-4S with an active
FCOE10-24 blade will result in the new standby CP not coming up.

Brocade recommends that Converged Mode be enabled on all interfaces connected to CNAs.

When operating in Converged Mode, tagged traffic on the native VLAN of the switch interface is
processed normally. The host should be configured not to send VLAN tagged traffic on the
switch’s native VLAN.

When operating in Converged Mode, tagged frames coming with a VLAN tag equal to the
configured native VLAN are dropped.

The Converged Network Adapter (CNA) may lose connectivity to the Brocade 8000/FCOE10-24 if
the CNA interface is toggled repeatedly over time. This issue is related to the CNA and rebooting
the CNA restores connectivity.

Although the Brocade 8000 and FCOE10-24 support the configuration of multiple CEE maps, it is
recommended to use only one CEE map on all interfaces connected to CNAs. Additionally, CEE
maps are not recommended for use with non-FCoE traffic. QoS commands are recommended for
interfaces carrying non-FCoE traffic.

It is recommended that Spanning Tree Protocol and its variants be disabled on CEE interfaces that
are connected to a server.

The Fabric Provided MAC Address (FPMA) and the Fibre Channel Identifier (FCID) assigned to a
VN_Port cannot be associated with any single front-end CEE port on which the FLOGI was
received.

LLDP neighbor information may be released before the timer expires when DCBX is enabled on a
CEE interface. This occurs only when the CEE interface state changes from active to any other
state. When the DCBX is not enabled, the neighbor information is not released until the timer
expires, irrespective of the interface state.

The FCoE Login Group Name should be unique in a fabric wide FCoE Login Management
Configuration. The merge logic is designed to modify the Login Group Name during merge when
Login group names in participating configurations conflict with each other. The current OUI of
00051E is being used by Brocade, while assigning the WWNs to 8000s, DCXs and DCX4Ss, which
would make only the last 3 bytes as different for any two 8000s, DCXs or DCX4Ss. Considering
this assignment method, the merge logic would rename the login group by including the last 3
bytes of WWN in the login group name, so that they are unique in the merged configuration.

For switches having different OUI indices from the 8 assigned to Brocade (for ex: 00051E and
006069), WWNs can differ in more than 3 bytes. In this case, after normal merge and a rename

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 29 of 47

 as per above described logic, login group names can be the same for WWNs differing only in OUIs.
The merge logic would drop one of the Login Groups to satisfy the requirement to keep the Login
Group Name unique in the fabric wide configuration.

Ethernet switch services must be explicitly enabled using the command ―fosconfig –enable ethsw”
before powering on an FCOE10-24 blade. Failure to do so will cause the blade to be faulted (fault
9). Users can enable ethsw after upgrading firmware without FC traffic interruption.

The Brocade 8000 does not support non-disruptive hot code loads (HCL). Upgrading the Brocade
8000 to FOS 6.4 or downgrading from v6.4 is disruptive to the IO through the switch.

A code load on a DCX or DCX-4s with one or more FCOE10-24 blades will disrupt the traffic going
through those FCOE10-24 blades.

HA Failover of CP blades in DCX or DCS-4s will also result in disruption of traffic through the
FCOE10-24 blades.

Connecting a Brocade 8000 to an FCR-capable switch with fcrbcast config enabled will cause a
storm of broadcast traffic resulting in termination of iswitchd.

When rebooting a DCX or DCX-4S with an FCOE10-24 blade, Qlogic CNA and LSAN zoning, the
switch will become very unresponsive for a period of time. This is due to the CNA sending
excessive MS queries to the switch.

An FCOE10-24 blade installed in the highest numbered slot of a DCX or DCX-4S chassis does not
send out FIP unsolicited advertisements. Therefore, it does not support FCoE functionality when
installed in this slot.
The Brocade 8000 and FCOE10-24 can handle 169 small FCoE frames in bursts. If you are using
the Brocade 8000 or FCOE10-24, and you delete a large number of v-ports with HCM, some of the
v-ports may not appear to be deleted. To correct this, disable and re-enable FCoE with the
following CLI commands:
switch:admin>fcoe --disable
switch:admin>fcoe --enable

Virtual Fabrics
On Virtual Fabrics capable platforms, the Virtual Fabrics feature must be enabled in order to
utilize the related capabilities including Logical Switches and Logical Fabrics. On units that ship
with FOS v6.3 installed, the Virtual Fabrics feature is enabled by default on capable platforms.
When creating Logical Fabrics that include switches that are not Virtual Fabrics capable, it is
possible to have two Logical Switches with different FIDs in the same fabric connected via a VF
incapable switch. Extra caution should be used to verify the FIDs match for all switches in the
same Logical Fabric.

A switch with Virtual Fabrics enabled may not participate in a fabric that is using Password
Database distribution or Administrative Domains. The Virtual Fabrics feature must be disabled
prior to deploying in a fabric using these features.
Virtual Fabrics is not supported on Brocade 7800.
VF dedicated ISLs are supported on FX8-24 blade. XISLs are not supported.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 30 of 47

Licensing Behavior
When operating a switch with Fabric OS v6.3, some licenses may display as ―Unknown.‖ This is
due to changes in licensing requirements for some features that no longer require a license key
that may still be installed on a switch.
If a Universal temporary license is enabled for a slot-based license feature, the license expiration
date displays as ―NA‖ in Web Tools. Use the licenseshow command to display the correct
expiration date.

Encryption Behavior for the Brocade Encryption Switch (BES) and FS8-18

The ―cryptocfg –manual_rekey –all‖ command should not be used in environments with multiple
encryption engines (FS8-18 blades) installed in a director-class chassis when more than one
encryption engine has access to the same LUN. In such situations, use the ―cryptocfg –
manual_rekey <CTC> <LUN Num> <Initiator PWWN>‖ command to manually rekey these LUNs.
When adding Nodes to an Encryption Group, ensure all Node Encryption Engines are in an
Enabled state.
When host clusters are deployed in an Encryption environment, please note the following
recommendations:
o If two EEs (encryption engines) are part of a HAC, configure the host/target pair such that they
form a multipath from both EEs. Avoid connecting both the host/target pairs to the same EE.
This connectivity does not give full redundancy in case of EE failure resulting in HAC failover.
o Since quorum disk plays a vital role in keeping the cluster in sync, please configure the
quorum disk to be outside of the encryption environment.
The ―–key_lifespan‖ option has no effect for ―cryptocfg –add –LUN‖, and only has an effect for
―cryptocfg --create –tapepool‖ for tape pools declared ―-encryption_format native‖. For all other
encryption cases, a new key is generated each time a medium is rewound and block zero is
written or overwritten. For the same reason, the ―Key Life‖ field in the output of ―cryptocfg --show -
container -all –stat‖ should always be ignored, and the ―Key life‖ field in ―cryptocfg --show –
tapepool –cfg‖ is only significant for native-encrypted pools.
The Quorum Authentication feature requires a compatible DCFM release (DCFM 10.3 or later) that
supports this feature. Note, all nodes in the EG must be running FOS v6.3.0 or later for quorum
authentication to be properly supported.
The System Card feature requires a compatible DCFM release that supports this feature. Note,
all nodes in the EG must be running FOS v6.3.0 or later for system verification to be properly
supported.
The Brocade Encryption switch and FS8-18 blade do not support QoS. When using encryption or
Frame Redirection, participating flows should not be included in QoS Zones.
When using Brocade Native Mode, in LKM installations, manual rekey is highly recommended. If
auto rekey is desired, the key expiry date should be configured only when the LUN is created.
Never modify the expiry date after configuring a LUN. If you modify the expiry time, after
configuring the LUN the expiration date will not update properly.
SKM is supported with Multiple Nodes and Dual SKM Key Vaults. Two-way certificate exchange is
supported. Please refer to the Encryption Admin Guide for configuration information. If using dual
SKMs on BES/FS8-18 Encryption Group, then these SKM Appliances must be clustered. Failure

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 31 of 47

 to cluster will result in key creation failure. Otherwise, register only one SKM on the BES/FS8-18
Encryption Group.
For dual LKM configuration on the Brocade Encryption Switch (BES) or a DCX/DCX-4S with FS8-18
blades as the primary and secondary key vaults, these LKM appliances must be clustered (linked).
Failure to cluster will result in key creation failure. Otherwise, register only one LKM on the
BES/FS8-18 Encryption Group. Please refer to the Encryption Admin Guide for configuration
information.

The RKM Appliance A1.6, SW v2.7 is supported. The procedure for setting up the RKM Appliance
with BES or a DCX/DCX-4S with FS8-18 blades is located in the Encryption Admin Guide.

Support for registering a 2nd RKM Appliance on BES/FS8-18 is blocked. If the RKM Appliances
are clustered, then the virtual IP address hosted by a 3rd party IP load balancer for the RKM
Cluster must be registered on BES/FS8-18 in the primary slot for Key Vault IP.

With Windows and Veritas Volume Manager/Veritas Dynamic Multipathing, when LUN sizes less
than 400MB are presented to BES for encryption, a host panic may occur and this configuration is
not supported in the FOS v6.3.1 or later release.

HCL from FOS v6.3.x to v6.4 is supported. Cryptographic operations and I/O will be disrupted but
other layer 2 traffic will not.

Relative to the BES and a DCX with FS8-18, all nodes in the Encryption Group must be at the
same firmware level of FOS v6.2 or later before starting a rekey or First Time Encryption operation.
Make sure that existing rekey or First Time Encryption operations complete before upgrading any
of the encryption products in the Encryption Group. Also, make sure that the upgrade of all nodes
in the Encryption Group completes before starting a rekey or First Time Encryption operation.
To clean up the stale rekey information for the LUN, follow one of the following two methods:
Method 1:
1. First, modify the LUN policy from ―encrypt‖ to ―cleartext‖ and commit. The LUN will
become disabled.
2. Enable the LUN using ―cryptocfg --enable –LUN‖. Modify the LUN policy from ―clear-
text‖ to ―encrypt‖ with ―enable_encexistingdata‖ to enable the first time encryption
and do commit. This will clear the stale rekey metadata on the LUN and the LUN can
be used again for encryption.
Method 2:
1. Remove the LUN from Crypto Target Container and commit.
2. Add the LUN back to the Crypto Target Container with LUN State=‖clear-text‖,
policy=‖encrypt‖ and ―enable_encexistingdata‖ set for enabling the First Time
Encryption and commit. This will clear the stale rekey metadata on the LUN and the
LUN can be used again for encryption.
TEMS key vault support troubleshooting tips:
o Regarding TEMS key vault (KV) communication with a Brocade encryption group, the
default communication port setting for the TEMS KV is 37208, however, the Brocade
encryption members and leader use 9000 so this needs to be reset on NCKA.
Additionally, the following is a checklist of things to review if the initial attempt to connect
to the KV fails:
 Check physical and logical connection via a ping on port 9000, this should be the
first check.
 For the group leader node, the kac client cert and the kv cert files are to be
identical.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 32 of 47

  For group member nodes the kv file is to be the same as the kv file on the group
leader node.
 Crosscheck to ensure the private key file corresponds to the kac public cert file
on any node.

When disk and tape CTCs are hosted on the same encryption engine, re-keying cannot be done
while tape backup or restore operations are running. Re-keying operations must be scheduled at a
time that does not conflict with normal tape I/O operations. The LUNs should not be configured
with auto rekey option when single EE has disk and tape CTCs.
Gatekeeper LUNs used by SYMAPI on the host for configuring SRDF/TF using in-band
management must be added to their containers with LUN state as ―cleartext‖, encryption policy as
―cleartext‖ and without ―-newLUN‖ option.
For new features added to encryption in FOS v6.4.0, such as, disk device decommissioning,
combined disk-tape encryption support on the same encryption engine, and redundant key ID
metadata option for replication environments, all the nodes in the encryption group must be
running FOS v6.4.0 or higher versions of FOS. Firmware downgrade will be prevented from FOS
v6.4.0 to a lower version if one or more of these features are in use.
Special Notes for HP Data Protector backup/restore application
Tape Pool encryption policy specification:
o On Windows Systems, HP Data Protector can be used with tape pool encryption
specification only if the following pool label options are used:
 Pick from Barcode
 User Supplied – Only 9 characters or less
For other options, behavior defaults to Tape LUN encryption policy.
o On HP-UX systems, HP Data Protector cannot be used with tape pool encryption
specification for any of the pool options. The behavior defaults to Tape LUN
Encryption Policy.
Tape LUN encryption policy specification:
o No restrictions, tape LUN encryption policy specification can be used with HP Data
Protector on HP-UX and Windows systems.
The disk device decommission operation works properly only with Containers (CTC) without
hyphen (-) in the container (CTC) name.
Adaptive Networking/Flow-Based QoS Prioritization
When using QoS in a fabric with 4G ports or switches, FOS v6.0 or later must be installed on all
products in order to pass QoS info. E_Ports from the DCX to other switches must come up AFTER
6.0 is running on those switches.
Flow based QoS is NOT supported on FC8 blades in the Brocade 48000.
Any products that are not capable of operating with FOS 6.0 may NOT exist in a fabric with Flow
based QoS. Major problems will occur if previous generation 2G products exist in the fabric.

Access Gateway
When running Adaptive Networking in AG mode note the following:
o QoS takes precedence over ingress rate limiting
o Ingress Rate Limiting is not enforced on trunked ports

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 33 of 47

 Users who want to utilize Access Gateway’s Device-based mapping feature in the ESX
environments are encouraged to refer to the SAN TechNote GA-TN-276-00 for best
implementation practices. Please follow these instructions to access this technote:
o Log in to http://my.brocade.com
o Go to Documentation > Tech Notes.
o Look for the Tech Note on Access Gateway Device-Based Mapping in VMware ESX Server.

Bottleneck Detection
Due to memory constraints, when using Bottleneck Detection on the Brocade 48000, a maximum
of 100 ports should be configured and enabled for monitoring at any time.

FCR
IPFC over FCR is now disabled by default. Switches that are upgraded to FOS v6.3 will retain their
configuration settings for IPFC over FCR. The change to the default configuration only applies to
new units shipping with FOS v6.3 or units running v6.3 that are reset to a default configuration.
Use fcrbcast - - enable to explicitly enable IPFC over FCR.
Broadcast frame forwarding is not supported in an FCR fabric with a Brocade 8000. By default,
broadcast frame forwarding is disabled on the FC router. If your edge fabric includes a Brocade
8000, do not enable broadcast frame forwarding on the FC router because this can degrade FCR
performance when there is excessive broadcast traffic.
With FC8 blades, the switch must be disabled to change the backbone fabric ID.
With routing and dual backbone fabrics, the backbone fabric ID must be changed to keep the IDs
unique.
When using FC Routing in a backbone to edge configuration with an Mi10K in the edge fabric,
users may experience slow throughput for hosts attached to the Mi10K. Users may encounter
this following a bounced IFL connection between the backbone and edge fabric. This slowdown
can be resolved by disabling/enabling the Mi10K ports for the hosts that are impacted.
Mi10K Directors operating with firmware prior to M-EOSn v9.9.5 may experience repeated system
faults when attached as an FCR edge switch to a Brocade 7800 EX Port. To avoid this, ensure
that the Mi10K is operating with M-EOSn v9.9.5 or later when in an edge fabric that will be
attached to a Brocade 7800 FCR Backbone.
VEX edge to VEX edge device sharing will not be supported.
FC FastWrite
When an FC FastWrite Initiator is moved to a port that doesn't have FC FastWrite enabled, I/O will
recover and revert to the slow path route (non FC FastWrite). This is a behavioral change from
FOS v6.2.x.
Traffic Isolation over FCR
All switches and Fibre Channel Routers both in edge and backbone fabrics must be running FOS
v6.1.0 or later in order to support this feature.
In order for Traffic Isolation over FCR to function properly, the associated TI zones in each fabric
(both edge fabrics and backbone fabric) need to have failover ENABLED.
TI over FCR is only supported in edge-to-edge configurations. There is no support for TI in
backbone to edge routing configurations.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 34 of 47

Integrated Routing
To allow Hot Code Load on a Brocade 5100 when using Integrated Routing, the edge switch
connected to the 5100 must be running Fabric OS v6.1 or later code.
Integrated Routing EX_Ports are only supported in the base switch on a switch with VF enabled.
Integrated Routing and TopTalkers (Fabric Mode) are not concurrently supported. To use
Integrated Routing, be sure to disable Fabric Mode TopTalkers prior to configuring EX_Ports first.

Native Connectivity
FOS-based platforms operating in interopmodes 2 or 3 should never be deployed in a fabric
without at least one M-series switch. FOS switches in interopmode 3 (McDATA Open Fabric Mode)
do not support configuration of zoning without an M-series switch in the fabric. When migrating
from M-series to B-series switches, all B-series switches should be configured to interopmode 0
(Brocade Native mode) once the last M-series switch has been removed from the fabric.
M-EOSc switches may exhibit a behavior where they block all attached devices with a reason
indication of ―Blocked Temporarily, Internal‖. Users that experience this may have power cycled
the M-series switch while it was participating in a fabric with Frame Redirection zoning, a
capability used for FOS-based application or encryption services . If the switch is still participating
in the fabric with Frame Redirection, issue the ―cfgsave‖ command from a Brocade FOS-based
switch with the Frame Redirection zone in its defined zone database. If the M-EOS switch is no
longer attached to the fabric with Frame Redirection zoning, issue the
―Config.Zoning.deleteSplZoneSet‖ command via CLI to the M-EOS switch.

FCAP
If VF is enabled on a switch, HTTPS and FCAP certificates should always be imported in the Default
Switch. Certificates imported in a non-Default Switch will not be available after hafailover
operation.

The pkicert (1.06) utility may cause evm errors, so each new switch should be isolated from the
fabric and placed in non-vf mode to install new certificates.

FICON
Refer to Appendix: Additional Considerations for FICON Environments for details and notes for
deployment in FICON environments.

FL_Port (Loop) Support

The FC8-48 and FC8-64 blade support attachment of loop devices in the DCX and DCX-4S.
Virtual Fabrics must be enabled on the chassis and loop devices may only be attached to ports on
a 48-port or 64-port blade assigned to a non-Default Logical Switch operating with the default 10-
bit addressing mode (they may not be in the default Logical Switch).
A maximum of 144 ports may be used for connectivity to loop devices in a single Logical Switch
within a chassis in 10-bit dynamic area mode on DCX-4S.
A maximum of 112 ports may be used for connectivity to loop devices in a single Logical Switch
within a chassis in 10-bit dynamic area mode on DCX.
Loop devices continue to be supported when attached to ports on the FC8-16, FC8-32, FC4-16
and FC4-32 blades with no new restrictions.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 35 of 47

Port Mirroring
On the Brocade 5300, the port mirroring feature has a limitation where all port mirror resources
must stay within the same ASIC port group. The resources are the configure mirror port, Source
Device, and Destination Device or ISL, if the Destination Device is located on another switch. The
ASIC port groups are 0-15, 16-31, 32-47, 48-63, and 64-79. The routes will be broken if the port
mirror resources are spread across multiple port groups.
Port Mirroring is not supported on the Brocade 7800 .
10G Interoperability
10G interop between FC10-6 and McDATA blades is not supported due to a HW limitation,
however the FC10-6 is supported in a chassis running in Interopmode 2 or 3 (FC10-6 to FC10-6
connections only). An FC10-6 blade will not synchronize with a McDATA 10G blade. However, the
inability to synchronize will not negatively impact the system .
Port Fencing
The state changes counter used by Fabric Watch in FOS v6.3 has been updated to ignore any
toggling of F-ports due to planned internal mechanisms such as throttling and trunking. There are
some FOS CLI commands such as portcfgspeed, portCfgTrunkPort etc that implicitly
disable/enable ports after configuration.
The Port Fencing feature is not supported for Loss of Sync (LOS) and Link Failure (LF) areas of
Port/F-port/E-port classes. State change area can be used in place of LOS/LF areas for Port
Fencing.
Zoning
If the default zoning mode is set to All Access and more than 120 devices are connected to the
fabric, you cannot enable All Access.
Beginning with the FOS v6.2.0 release, all WWNs containing upper-case characters are
automatically converted to lower-case when associated with a zone alias and stored as part of a
saved configuration on a switch. For example, a WWN entered as either
―AA.BB.CC.DD.EE.FF.GG.HH‖ or ―aa.bb.cc.dd.ee.ff.gg.hh‖ when associated with a zone alias will be
stored as ―aa.bb.cc.dd.ee.ff.gg.hh‖ on a switch operating with FOS v6.2.0 or later.

This behavioral change in saved zone alias WWN members will not impact most environments.
However, in a scenario where a switch with a zone alias WWN member with upper case characters
(saved on the switch with pre-FOS v6.2.0 code) is merged with a switch with the same alias
member WWN in lower case characters, the merge will fail, since the switches do not recognize
these zoning configurations as being the same.
For additional details and workaround solutions, please refer to the latest FOS Admin Guide
updates or contact Brocade Customer Support.
ICLs
If a DCX with an 8-link ICL license is connected to a DCX with a 16-link license, the DCX with the
16-link license will report enc_out errors. The errors are harmless, but will continue to increment.
These errors will not be reported if a DCX with a 16-link license is connected to a DCX-4S with only
8-link ICL ports.
If ICL ports are disabled on only one side of an ICL link, the enabled side may see enc_out errors .

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 36 of 47

AP 7420 Interoperability (refer to Defect 307117)
A switch running FOS v6.4.0 cannot connect to an E_Port on an AP7420.
An AP7420 can form a direct ISL connection with a switch running FOS v6.3 or lower version of
FOS firmware. A switch running FOS v6.4.0 can still participate in a fabric with an AP7420 as long
as the AP7420 is not directly connected to the FOS v6.4.0 switch.

A switch running FOS v6.4.0 in InteropMode 0 (Brocade Native Mode) cannot connect to an EX_Port on an
AP7420. A switch running FOS v6.4.0 in InteropMode 2 or InteropMode 3 can be connected to EX ports on an
AP7420.

Extended Fabrics and R_RDY Flow Control

Beginning with Fabric OS v5.1, Brocade supported the Extended Fabrics feature in conjunction with R_RDY
flow control (R_RDY flow control mode can be enabled via portCfgISLMode command). R_RDY flow control
mode that uses IDLE primitives does not support Brocade frame-based Trunking for devices such as Time
Division Multiplexor (TDM.) In order to overcome this limitation and provide support for frame-based Trunking
with Extended Fabrics, Fabric OS v6.2.0 and later has been enhanced to support interoperability with these
distance extension devices.
Fabric OS v6.3.1 allows Extended Fabrics E_Ports to operate in VC_RDY mode using either ARB or IDLE
primitives as fill words. This allows frame-based Trunking to be supported on Extended Fabrics E-ports even
when IDLE primitives are configured for these ports when operating in native VC_RDY mode. Prior to this
change, frame-based Trunking was supported only when ARB primitives were used in VC_RDY mode. With
Fabric OS v6.2 or later, frame-based Trunking is supported on Extended Fabrics E_Ports regardless of whether
IDLE or ARB primitives are used when operating in native VC_RDY mode.
Implementation
The portcfglongdistance CLI parameter ―VC Translation Link Init‖ is now overloaded to specify if the long
distance link should use IDLE or ARB primitives. By default, vc_init is enabled. If vc_init is enabled, the long
distance link will use ARB primitives. If vc_init is disabled, the link will use IDLE primitives.
Note:
Buffer to Buffer Credit Recovery feature is not supported on Extended Fabrics E_Port when it is configured to
use IDLE primitives. The user must disable buffer to buffer credit recovery feature using the command
portcfgcreditrecovery and specifying the disable option; otherwise, the link will continuously reset.
The Adaptive Networking SID/DID Traffic Prioritization QoS feature is not supported on Extended Fabrics
E_Ports when IDLE primitives are configured on these ports. This is because in this mode only data Virtual
Channels are available while QoS related virtual channels are not available.
When connecting to an extension device that does not support ARB primitives (such as some TDM products),
the following configuration must be used:
portcfgqos -disable <port>
portcfgcreditrecovery –disable <port>
portCfgLongDistance <port> <LD|LD> 0 <distance>

The fabric parameter ―fabric.ops.mode.longdistance‖ is now deprecated and should not be used.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 37 of 47

Miscellaneous
When ports on a 5470 embedded switch are configured for 8G, Emulex HBAs will not log
in properly. Setting the port to auto-negotiate allows these HBAs to log in correctly at 8G.
POST diagnostics for the Brocade 5100 have been modified in v6.3.1b/v6.4.0 and later
releases to eliminate an ―INIT NOT DONE‖ error at the end of an ASIC diagnostic port
loopback test. This modification addresses BL-1020 Initialization errors encountered
during the POST portloopbacktest. (Defect 263200)
It is recommended that no more the 50 F_Port Top Talkers be enabled on a 48000
director in a large fabric (>4000 devices).
It is recommended that for directors with more than 300 E_Ports, the switch be disabled
prior to executing the ―switchCfgTrunk‖ command (used to disable or enable trunking on
the switch).
During non-disruptive firmware upgrades, E_Ports in R-RDY mode may cause some frame
drops on the E-port links.
The portCfgFillWord command, applicable to 8G-capable ports, has been enhanced with
FOS v6.3.1 and v6.4 to provide two new configuration options (Modes 2 and 3). The
available settings include:

Mode - Link Init/Fill Word

Mode 0 – IDLE/IDLE
Mode 1 – ARBF/ARBF
Mode 2 – IDLE/ARBF
Mode 3 – If ARBF/ARBF fails use IDLE/ARBF

Although this setting only affects devices logged in at 8G, changing the mode is disruptive
regardless of the speed the port is operating at. The setting is retained and applied any
time an 8G device logs in. Upgrades to FOS v6.3.1 or v6.4 from prior releases supporting
only modes 0 and 1 will not change the existing setting, but switches or ports reset to
factory defaults with FOS v6.3.1 or v6.4 will be configured to Mode 0 by default. The
default setting on new units may vary by vendor. Please use portcfgshow CLI to view the
current portcfgfillword status for that port.
Modes 2 and 3 are compliant with FC-FS-3 specifications (standards specify the
IDLE/ARBF behavior of Mode 2 which is used by Mode 3 if ARBF/ARBF fails after 3
attempts). For most environments, Brocade recommends using Mode 3, as it provides
more flexibility and compatibility with a wide range of devices. In the event that the
default setting or Mode 3 does not work with a particular device, contact your switch
vendor for further assistance.
For the configure command, in FOS v6.4.0, the default value that displays for Maximum Logins per
switch is different than the value that displays in FOS v6.3.x. The default value has not changed; it
was displayed incorrectly in FOS v6.3.x, and is now corrected.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 38 of 47

Defects
Closed with Code Change in Fabric OS v6.4.0a
This section lists the defects with Critical, High and Medium Technical Severity closed with a code change in
Fabric OS v6.4.0.a

Defect ID: DEFECT000271043 Technical Severity: High

Summary: As a result of firmwaredownload, systemverifcation test, or blade insertion, occasionally blade
FCoE10-24 may turn faulty 21
Symptom: Slotshow indicates that FCoE10-24 is found to be in a faulty state
Workaround: slotpoweroff/on the FCoE10-24 to clear the faulty state
Feature: CEE-Infrastructure Function: ANVIL DRIVER
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000290749 Technical Severity: High

Summary: FICON: FRU events are not generated on the operator's console for removal or insertion
Symptom: No FRU event notification at the operator's console
Feature: FICON Function: Ficud
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000296886 Technical Severity: High

Summary: Rare corner case of Lossless being disabled after several downgrade and upgrade scenarios.
Symptom: A DCX logical switch with port based routing, IOD (In-Order Delivery), DLS, and LosslessDLS
enabled running Fabric OS v6.3.0b is updated to v6.4.0, Lossless gets disabled.
Workaround: Re-enable Lossless / IOD on logical switches that were previously enabled.
Feature: 8G Platform Services Function: Routing
Probability: Low
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000297733 Technical Severity: High

Summary: With FMS enabled, after moving all ICL and 254 FC ports into a logical switch with zero based
addressing, port 1/0 (area 00) is incorrectly disabled
Symptom: Port 0 with area 0x00 is disabled
Workaround:
Feature: 8G Platform Services Function: FOS Kernel Drivers
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 39 of 47

Defect ID: DEFECT000297793 Technical Severity: High
Summary: Data encryption, name server fails to show the existence of a specific virtual initiator
Symptom: As a result of an external FC port experiencing an excessive number of encoding CRC errors the
internal ports are faulted incorrectly by switch firmware, hence a data encryption virtual initiator
associated with the internal port fails to appear in name server.
Workaround: Remove the condition / cause of the excessive CRC errors (ie replace cable or SFP).
Feature: Data Security Function: Platform
Probability: Low
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000297978 Technical Severity: High

Summary: Zoned terminated while activating zoning from DCFM
Symptom: Unexpected reboot and failover if attempt to push zone DB from DCFM in IM2/IM3 fabrics only.
Workaround: Use CLI (or ECFM for non-TI/Redirect zones) in IM2/IM3
Feature: FC Services Function: Zoning
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:
Where Else Fixed: FOS6.3.1 b

Defect ID: DEFECT000298015 Technical Severity: High

Summary: After code upgrade, non Brocade branded SFPs got Mod_Val.
Symptom: non-Brocade branded SFPs are in Mod_Val state after firmware upgrade. This impacts FOS
v6.2.2x and FOS v6.3.1x only with 1 specific non-Brocade branded SFPs.
Workaround: Use Brocade branded SFPs
Feature: 4G Platform Services Function: FOS Kernel Drivers
Probability: Low
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000298098 Technical Severity: High

Summary: FICON: NSD panic while running IRNDUP to SW48K
Symptom: Missing interrupt (IFCC) while running IRNDUP
Feature: FC Services Function: Name Server
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 40 of 47

Defect ID: DEFECT000298730 Technical Severity: High
Summary: A LUN sized > 2TB cannot be configured for encryption with the -newLUN option
Symptom: There is a potential for hosts to overwrite encryption metadata for encrypted LUNs where Read
Capacity (16) is used to determine max LUN LBA (LUNs greater than 2TB in size).
Workaround: Do not configure LUNs for encryption, using the -newLUN option if the LUN size is greater
than 2TB.
Feature: Data Security Function: Disk Encryption
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000299991 Technical Severity: High

Summary: FICON: Webtools out of sync with CLI in not showing correct port status when FMS mode is
enabled and port is moved between different logical switches from the DCFM
Symptom: Webtools port status from Port Admin is not displaying correct port status where CLI does.
Feature: WebMgmt Function: WT Platform Support
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000300388 Technical Severity: High

Summary: WebTools: Name server tab unable to export name server data base from FCR configured
switch.
Symptom: After opening the name server tab and performing export the tables, export fails with an error
message ―For Input String N/A‖.
Feature: WebMgmt Function: Name Server
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000301006 Technical Severity: High

Summary: Data Encryption, tape containers get stuck in login busy state after performing ISL disruption
tests
Symptom: Performing HA failover by toggling ISL between HA cluster members can cause containers to be
not hosted with reason "login busy".
Workaround: Do not connect target devices to BES directly, but connect them to an L2 switch.
Feature: Data Security Function: Tape Encryption
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 41 of 47

Defect ID: DEFECT000281212 Technical Severity: Medium
Summary: In AG mode, N-Port failover results in F-Ports with attached hosts getting stuck as G_Port
Symptom: F-Ports get stuck as G-Ports after AG N-Port failover.This happens when there is a change in the
base address for the N-Port due to failover, or when there is no wwn-area mapping for few
devices and due to the login sequence of these devices, the PIDS assigned conflicted with the
already allocated PID to another device, resulting in the F-Ports getting stuck as G-Port.
Workaround: portdisable/enable
Feature: Embedded Platform Services Function: Other
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.2.0_bc Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000286529 Technical Severity: Medium

Summary: FICON: when CHPs are very busy, CUP may report many IFCCs
Symptom: IFCCs on CUP exchange
Feature: Field Escalation Function: FICON
Probability: Low
Found in Release: FOS6.3.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000288968 Technical Severity: Medium

Summary: When running 200 ms delay and 1% packet loss, after 4 days of run time, an IPSec enabled
FCIP circuit bounced.
Symptom: Tunnel bounce can occur.
Feature: FCIP Function: FCIP Port
Probability: Low
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000289418 Technical Severity: Medium

Summary: Tape drives fail when running over FCR with EX ports in Open mode. The REC accept payload is
incorrect.
Symptom: If host to tape I/O traverses FCR and includes an edge fabric, the tape drives would run for a bit
and then fail due to REC ACC is not processed correctly if EX port is operating in IM3/Open
mode.
Workaround:
Feature: Legacy FCR - 7500/FR4-18i Function: FCR Daemon
Probability: High
Found in Release: FOS6.3.0 Service Request ID: 419137

Defect ID: DEFECT000290784 Technical Severity: Medium

Summary: Abort in Read emulation if Attention status received between status and status accept
Symptom: IFCCs during Tape Read processing.
Workaround: Disable FICON Emulation
Feature: FCIP Function: FCIP I/O
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.3.1 Service Request ID:

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 42 of 47

Defect ID: DEFECT000298077 Technical Severity: Medium
Summary: FICON: IFCCs seen when enabling ICL ports wiht Lossless DLS enabled
Symptom: IFCCs observed and traffic can be adversely affected.
Workaround:
Feature: 8G Platform Services Function: Routing
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000298120 Technical Severity: Medium

Summary: Port based routing frame were out of order when FCP image pairs concurrently initiate
exchanges as originators over GE ports
Symptom: 3rd party device has very poor performance over FCIP link between two Brocade 7800 over 1G
GE port. Same issue applies to FX8-24 blades.
Workaround:
Feature: FCIP Function: FCIP Performance
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.3.1 Service Request ID: 429767
Where Else Fixed: FOS6.3.1 b

Defect ID: DEFECT000298774 Technical Severity: Medium

Summary: Multiple critical CDR-1003 raslog during supportsave
Symptom: After a non-disruptive upgrade from Fabric OS version v6.1.x to Fabric OS version 6.2.x, CDR-
1003 CRITICAL messages may be posted during a supportSave operation on Brocade 4G
platforms. With the fix in this release, the critical message is update to Warning and it can be
ignored unless it's persistent and not happening during supportsave.
Workaround: Ignore if CDR-1003 happens during supportsave and not persistent.
Feature: 4G ASIC Driver Function: ASIC Driver
Probability: High
Found in Release: FOS6.3.1 Service Request ID:

Defect ID: DEFECT000299335 Technical Severity: Medium

Summary: FICON emulation, core hangs during error recovery
Symptom: After an FCIP link failure, an FFDC will occur and some traffic across remaining FCIP links will
continue to be disrupted.
Feature: FCIP Function: Emulation
Probability: High
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 43 of 47

Defect ID: DEFECT000300065 Technical Severity: Medium
Summary: Data Encryption, Manual HA failback command on FOS v6.4.0 fails
Symptom: Manual failback command (cryptocfg –-failback -EE ) issued from node other than failed over
node fails with an error.
Workaround: Issue the manual failback command from the node hosting the failed over containers.
Feature: Data Security Function: HA Cluster
Probability: Medium
Found in Release: FOS6.4.0 Service Request ID:

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 44 of 47

Appendix: Additional Considerations for FICON Environments
This appendix includes supplemental information for users deploying FOS-based platforms in FICON
environments.
The DCX-4S is only supported for FICON in Brocade Native Mode (interopmode 0) and therefore is not
supported for interoperability with M-EOS platforms.
Multiple 10 Gb/sec ISLs and FCIP links can load-share between cascaded FICON directors/switches
but do not load balance in a FICON configuration.
10-bit addressing mode is not supported in a FICON environment.

Area Comments
FCIP VEX ports are not supported on the 7800 and FX8-24 blade in a FICON environment
FCIP When performing multiple cabling changes to the SAN fabric in a FICON Emulating FCIP
Tunnel configuration with the Brocade 7800 or FX8-24 blade, either disable all of the
FCIP Tunnels or issue the switch disable command on all FCIP interconnected switches
to avoid IFCCs in a mainframe environment. Issuing either a switch disable or an FCIP
Tunnel disable command will allow the FCIP FICON Emulation processing state-machine
to execute an orderly cleanup process and allow normal activation of the new
configuration. When all cabling and Traffic Isolation Zone manipulations have been
completed, enable the switches or the FCIP Tunnels.
Firmware Non-disruptive Hot Code Load is only supported on director class switches (48000,
Downloads DCX, and DCX-4S). Comprehensive non-disruptive Hot Code Load is not supported on
the 7500 or 7800 or a DCX, DCX-4S or 48000 with an FR4-18i or FX8-24 blades since
the FCIP tunnels will go down for 10-15 seconds and all traffic in the tunnels will be
disrupted.. IFCCs may result if traffic is not stopped while downloading firmware.
Firmware Replacement of a CP card in the Brocade 48000 may cause disruption of I/O traffic.
Downloads Brocade recommends that the CP be replaced during a scheduled downtime to prevent
disruption in FICON environments.
Firmware The CUP device must be varied offline to all MVS partitions before starting a code load.
Downloads The CUP device can be varied back online after the code load completes. Failure to vary
off the CUP devices may result in missing interrupt.
Interoperability When connecting an 8G capable port in a Brocade switch to an IBM Virtualization
Engine TS7700, the port must be configured to a minimum of 16 buffers to avoid
IFCCs at the channel and loss of FICON paths to the control unit. This requires the
Extended Fabric license on the Brocade switch.
Manageability In a mixed fabric environment, an M-EOS switch must be principal switch if the fabric is
in Interopmode 2 (McDATA Fabric Mode).

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 45 of 47

 Manageability It is suggested that Port Fencing be used to avoid taking ports down for normal fabric
events. The recommended fencing criteria and settings are:

Criteria Value
ITW (Invalid Transmission Words) 25
CRC (Cyclical Redundancy Check) 3
Protocol Errors 2
State Change 7
Note: In a FICON environment, the time base polling interval MUST be set to one minute
for granular control and response. By default, Port Fencing time base is set to one
hour.

Manageability Firmware download is executed sequentially if ECFM is used for downloading code to
FOS switches.
Manageability As a "Best Practice" for deploying FOS switches/directors into a FICON environment,
verify the FOS version shipped with the most current FOS recommendation. It is
recommended to update all FOS switch/directors to the same FOS levels for
production.
Manageability The remote CUP may not work when the channel is connected to an 8G blade on a
48000 cascaded to a remote switch.
Manageability FMS must be enabled on the local switch for the remote CUP to work.
Optics Brocade recommends using 50 micron multimode fiber optic cabling rated at 2000
MHz-km (OM3 fiber) for connecting to 8 Gb/sec short wavelength (SX) small form factor
pluggable optics (SFPs). Other 50 micron and 62.5 micron multimode fiber may be
used as an alternative, but distance limitations may exist.
Serviceability Performance of optical links depends upon the cleanliness of the cables and
connectors, especially at 8 Gb/sec or higher speeds. Consult with your switch and cable
vendors for proper cable maintenance.
Serviceability The 48 port blade (FC8-48) is supported as follows:
• The switch, or logical switch, must be configured for Brocade Native mode
(interopmode 0).
• It is only supported on VF enabled chassis on the DCX.
• It is not supported in the default switch on the DCX.
Serviceability When the mainframe goes through a resetting event (ConfIg POR, IPL, POR), in rare
instances, some of the ports may come up in an "Invalid Attach" state. To recover these
ports, vary the CHPIDs offline and back online. This is most likely caused by other ports
on the system experiencing link level errors and should be debugged accordingly.

Traffic Isolation Enable Lossless DLS or Lossless DPS when activating Traffic Isolation (TI) Zones to
Zones avoid any traffic disruption.
Traffic Isolation Traffic Isolation (TI) Zoning with FICON supports enabling or disabling of the failover
Zones option. Assistance from service support should be sought before attempting to enable
this feature.
Traffic Isolation Deactivating TI Zone with failover disabled may caused IFCC's. Enable failover prior to
Zones deactivating TI Zone to avoid IFCCs.

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 46 of 47

Note: Please refer to the Firmware Upgrades and Downgrades section of this document when planning an
upgrade to a fabric that includes the 7500 or 7800, or has any FR4-18i or FX8-24 blades in a 48k, DCX-4S, or
DCX chassis .

Interoperability
Within a fabric, current major releases will work with previous major releases on the same platform. When
cascading switches, it is recommended to keep all switches in the fabric at the same code level. Although not
expressly prohibited, having two switches in the same fabric that differ by more than one major FOS release
level is not recommended. For example, a switch at FOS v6.4.0a connected to another switch at v6.3.0d is OK.
Connecting a switch running FOS v6.4.0a to a switch running FOS v6.1.0a is not recommended.
The following table indicates supported intra-fabric interoperability between hardware platforms, supported
management software levels, and recommended firmware versions.

FICON Hardware/Firmware/Software Interoperability with FOS v6.4.0a

DCFM EFCM DCX/ 48000 M6140/ 5100/ 4100/ 7500/ 7800
DCX-4S Mi10K 5300 4900/ 7500E3
50002

DCX/
10.4.1 NS S S S 1,4 S S S S
DCX-4S

48000 10.4.1 NS S NS S S S S

M6140/
10.4.1 9.7.4 S S1 NS S1 S1
Mi10K

5100/ 10.4.1 NS S S S S
5300

4100/
4900/ 10.4.1 9.7.4 S NS NS
50002

7500/
10.4.1 NS S NS
7500E3

7800 10.4.1 NS S

Table Notes:
S=Supported
NS = Not Supported
FR4-18i Extension blade is only interoperable with 7500 or 7500E extension switches.
FX8-24 Extension blade is only interoperable with 7800 extension switch.
FC8-64, FS8-18, FCOE10-24 and FA4-18i are not supported in a FICON environment.

All platforms operating with FOS v6.4.0a unless otherwise specified.

¹ - Supported with Mi10K/M6140 running M-EOS v9.9.7

2
- 4100, 4900, & 5000 running FOS v6.2.0e
3
- Brocade Accelerator for FICON option requires 7500 or 7500E Upgrade license
4
- DCX-4S does not support interop with M-EOS platforms (M6140/Mi10k)

Fabric OS v6.4.0a Release Notes 3.0 Page 47 of 47