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FortiGate-5140 fabric backplane communication Fabric channel connections between FortiSwitch-5003A boards
FortiSwitch-5003A and 5003 Fabric and Base Backplane Communications Guide
01-30000-85717-20081205 27
Fabric channel connections between FortiSwitch-5003A boards
When two FortiSwitch-5003A boards are installed in a single chassis their fabric
channels are connected together. This means there is a data connection between
fabric channel 1 and fabric channel 2. Unless you are going to use this connection
you should disable it.
If one or more of the FortiGate-5001A or 5005FA2 boards are operating in
transparent mode, the connection between the fabric channels can cause looping.
If you have one or more FortiGate-5001A or 5005FA2 boards operating in
transparent mode with two FortiSwitch-5003A boards in the same chassis you
must disable communication between the FortiSwitch-5003A boards.
The fabric channel connection between the FortiSwitch-5003A boards uses an
internal FortiSwitch-5003A interface called slot-2/1. To disable the fabric channel
connection between two FortiSwitch-5003A boards you should set the status of
slot-2/1 to down for one of the boards. Connect to the CLI of one of the
FortiSwitch-5003A boards and enter the following command:
config switch fabric-channel physical-port
edit slot-2/1
set status down
end
Fabric gigabit switching between chassis
You can use the FortiSwitch-5003A front panel fabric interfaces to provide
10-gigabit data communications between the fabric channels of any combination
of FortiGate-5050 and FortiGate-5140 chassis.
Figure 11 shows data communication between two FortiGate-5140 chassis using
fabric channel 1. The top chassis in the figure contains a FortiSwitch-5003A board
in hub/switch slot 1 and six FortiGate-5001A boards. The bottom chassis contains
a FortiSwitch-5003A board also in hub/switch slot 1 and four FortiGate-5005FA2
boards.
The chassis are connected together using the FortiSwitch-5003A F1 front panel
interface in the top chassis and the FortiSwitch-5003A F7 front panel interface in
the bottom chassis.
In this configuration the FortiSwitch-5003A boards are operating as layer-2
switches for fabric channel 1 and the FortiGate-5001A and 5005FA2 boards are
operating as typical standalone FortiGate units.
Note: Its not required, but in most cases you would connect the same fabric channels
together. That is you would connect fabric channel 1 on one chassis to fabric channel 1 on
another. Usually you would not connect fabric channel 1 on one chassis to fabric channel 2
on another chassis. Also, you would usually not connect a base channel from one chassis
to a fabric channel on another chassis. You should be careful of looping when connecting
chassis together if some of the FortiGate boards in the chassis are operating in transparent
mode.