Obtaining multiple port addresses by a fibre channel switch from a network fabric
US7599397B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Dec 27, 2005 |
| Grant date | Oct 6, 2009 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Oct 16, 2027 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L49/357
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Embodiments of the present invention address deficiencies of the art in respect to Fibre Channel (FC) switch interoperability and provide a novel and non-obvious data processing system, method and computer program product for obtaining multiple port addresses by a FC switch directly from a SAN fabric. In one embodiment, the system uses an N_Port connection from the last tier FC SAN switch to connect to the rest of the SAN fabric and employs the N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) Fibre Channel feature. The NPIV feature allows one physical FC port (N_Port) to login to a SAN fabric multiple times and receive unique N_Port IDs with each login. This allows the one physical FC port (N_Port) to act as multiple logical N_Ports.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.