| Patent application number | Description | Published |
|---|
| 20110085557 | Partitioning of Switches and Fabrics into Logical Switches and Fabrics | 04-14-2011 |
| 20110085558 | Virtual and Logical Inter-Switch Links | 04-14-2011 |
| 20110085559 | Transit Switches in a Network of Logical Switches - A Layer 2 network switch is partitionable into a plurality of switch fabrics. The single-chassis switch is partitionable into a plurality of logical switches, each associated with one of the virtual fabrics. The logical switches behave as complete and self-contained switches. A logical switch fabric can span multiple single-chassis switch chassis. Logical switches are connected by inter-switch links that can be either dedicated single-chassis links or logical links. An extended inter-switch link can be used to transport traffic for one or more logical inter-switch links. Physical ports of the chassis are assigned to logical switches and are managed by the logical switch. Legacy switches that are not partitionable into logical switches can serve as transit switches between two logical switches. | 04-14-2011 |
| 20110085568 | MAPPING LOGICAL PORTS OF A NETWORK SWITCH TO PHYSICAL PORTS - A Layer 2 network switch is partitionable into a plurality of switch fabrics. The single-chassis switch is partitionable into a plurality of logical switches, each associated with one of the virtual fabrics. The logical switches behave as complete and self-contained switches. A logical switch fabric can span multiple single-chassis switch chassis. Logical switches are connected by inter-switch links that can be either dedicated single-chassis links or logical links. An extended inter-switch link can be used to transport traffic for one or more logical inter-switch links. Physical ports of the chassis are assigned to logical switches and are managed by the logical switch. Legacy switches that are not partitionable into logical switches can serve as transit switches between two logical switches. | 04-14-2011 |
| 20110085569 | CREATION AND DELETION OF LOGICAL PORTS IN A LOGICAL SWITCH | 04-14-2011 |
| 20110173608 | Method and Apparatus for Providing Virtual Machine Information to a Network Interface - A hypervisor preferably provides VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range information to the HBA when a VM is created. Alternatively, the HBA can determine that a LUN/LBA range is new and request VM identity, priority and LUN/LBA range from the hypervisor. The HBA creates a table containing the VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range. The HBA then detects operations directed to the LUN/LBA range and does a lookup to determine VM identification and priority. VM identification and priority are then mapped into a field in a frame using a unique identifier. The unique identifier can either be placed using reserved bits on the existing Fibre Channel (FC) header or can use bits in an additional header, such as a modified IFR header. | 07-14-2011 |
| 20110173609 | Method and Apparatus for Determining the Identity of a Virtual Machine - A hypervisor preferably provides VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range information to the HBA when a VM is created. Alternatively, the HBA can determine that a LUN/LBA range is new and request VM identity, priority and LUN/LBA range from the hypervisor. The HBA creates a table containing the VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range. The HBA then detects operations directed to the LUN/LBA range and does a lookup to determine VM identification and priority. VM identification and priority are then mapped into a field in a frame using a unique identifier. The unique identifier can either be placed using reserved bits on the existing Fibre Channel (FC) header or can use bits in an additional header, such as a modified IFR header. | 07-14-2011 |
| 20110255533 | Remote F_Ports - Disclosed techniques allow for devices of a SAN to login to an F_port of a different switch than the switch to which the device is physically connected. These techniques allow moving some of the capability from an edge switch to another switch in the fabric, with the edge switch transporting incoming frames from the device to the other switch and thence across the SAN to the destination device, and similarly transporting outgoing frames from the more-capable switch to the edge switch for delivery to the device connected to the edge switch. In some embodiments, the edge switch may determine the other switch to which the device should login based on properties of the other switch. | 10-20-2011 |
| 20120063303 | Manageability Tools for Lossless Networks - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 03-15-2012 |
| 20120063304 | Manageability Tools for Lossless Networks - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 03-15-2012 |
| 20120063329 | Manageability Tools for Lossless Networks - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 03-15-2012 |
| 20120063333 | Manageability Tools for Lossless Networks - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 03-15-2012 |
| 20120218990 | Virtual Port World Wide Names - A network switch allows defining a virtual port worldwide name (VPWWN) and associating the VPWWN with an F_port of the network switch, for use by a host bus adaptor (HBA) connecting to the network switch. Both a default and a user VPWWN may be defined, with the user VPWWN typically taking precedence over the default VPWWN. A database of VPWWN associations may be used to ensure uniqueness of the user VPWWN. Where the HBA allows dynamic assignment of WWNs, the VPWWN may be pushed to the HBA. The VPWWNs may be deleted, and moved to another port as desired. | 08-30-2012 |
| 20130286858 | MANAGEABILITY TOOLS FOR LOSSLESS NETWORKS - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 10-31-2013 |
| 20130343186 | MANAGEABILITY TOOLS FOR LOSSLESS NETWORKS - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 12-26-2013 |
| 20140010092 | PERVASIVE NETWORK DIAGNOSTICS USING HBAS - Specially configured host bus adaptors (HBAs) are located in the switches in the fabric or added to a management server. The HBAs are programmed to perform higher level protocol analysis, such as monitoring exchanges, LUNs, and VM/LUN/LBA ranges and developing SCSI statistics on the flows. The HBA can detect protocol exceptions. When located in the switches, mirroring of the desired frames is simplified as all routing is handled internally to the switch, with the HBA/switch combination providing data over the management Ethernet port to a management server. To maintain performance, preferably only the protocol relevant frames are mirrored to the HBAs. With the data provided from the HBAs, in conjunction with the normal diagnostic and statistics data available from the switch itself, the management server can correlate events end-to-end, correlate I/O error statistics collected from the fabric with server statistics, and correlate performance statistics collected from the fabric with server statistics. | 01-09-2014 |
| 20140029466 | MANAGEABILITY TOOLS FOR LOSSLESS NETWORKS - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, configure hold times on edge switches to be different from hold times on core switches, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 01-30-2014 |
| 20140056147 | MANAGEABILITY TOOLS FOR LOSSLESS NETWORKS - Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times on core ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks. | 02-27-2014 |
| 20140165062 | Method and Apparatus for Providing Virtual Machine Information to a Network Interface - A hypervisor preferably provides VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range information to the HBA when a VM is created. Alternatively, the HBA can determine that a LUN/LBA range is new and request VM identity, priority and LUN/LBA range from the hypervisor. The HBA creates a table containing the VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range. The HBA then detects operations directed to the LUN/LBA range and does a lookup to determine VM identification and priority. VM identification and priority are then mapped into a field in a frame using a unique identifier. The unique identifier can either be placed using reserved bits on the existing Fibre Channel (FC) header or can use bits in an additional header, such as a modified IFR header. | 06-12-2014 |
| 20140286194 | Virtual Port World Wide Names - A network switch allows defining a virtual port worldwide name (VPWWN) and associating the VPWWN with an F_port of the network switch, for use by a host bus adaptor (HBA) connecting to the network switch. Both a default and a user VPWWN may be defined, with the user VPWWN typically taking precedence over the default VPWWN. A database of VPWWN associations may be used to ensure uniqueness of the user VPWWN. Where the HBA allows dynamic assignment of WWNs, the VPWWN may be pushed to the HBA. The VPWWNs may be deleted, and moved to another port as desired. | 09-25-2014 |
