The InfiniBand-based Interconnect includes the ability to create logical subsets, partitions, of the physical Interconnect called secure fabrics.

Secure fabrics partition the physical fabric into multiple independent fabrics. A secure fabric enables you to construct a closed communication group that consists of the set of fabric endpoints, partitions and nonpartitionable enterprise partition platforms (NEPPs), associated with the secure fabric that can communicate with each other. However, they cannot communicate with other endpoints that are not associated with that secure fabric.

Furthermore, other partitions and NEPPs that are not associated with that secure fabric cannot communicate with or view the traffic of partitions and NEPPs that are associated with that secure fabric. An endpoint’s operating system can communicate over any secure fabric that the partition is associated with. A given partition image can be associated with zero, one, or many secure fabrics. You can create up to 118 secure fabrics in the ClearPath fabric.

Quality-of-Service Levels

Each secure fabric created over a ClearPath physical fabric has a Quality of Service (QoS) level associated with it. The QoS level determines the minimum guaranteed level of access to the physical fabric that the secure fabric will have, relative to all the other secure fabrics associated with the same physical fabric that are concurrently active. Since the physical Interconnect can be subdivided into multiple secure fabrics, it is crucial that the secure fabrics share the physical resources in a desirable manner. That is, no secure fabric should be able to prevent another secure fabric from gaining access to the physical interconnect (no starvation). The minimum guaranteed usage of the physical interconnect relative to the other secure fabrics associated with the physical interconnect should be proportional to the secure fabric’s QoS relative the other associated secure fabrics’ QoS.

Based on the requirements and traffic associated with an application, or based on a system’s application workload, the priorities, and thus the relative performance of some secure fabrics may need to be set. The QoS of a ClearPath Forward secure fabric is an attribute of the secure fabric. The 118 available secure fabrics in a ClearPath fabric are divided into four QoS groups. The creation of a secure fabric starts by choosing the required relative QoS of a secure fabric. An ID, if available, for a secure fabric with the requested QoS level is returned. From highest to lowest priority, the Quality of Service levels are as follows.

For more information on secure fabrics and QoS, refer to the ClearPath Forward Overview and Planning Guide.