In earlier releases of the ClearPath Forward fabric, the Inter-Partition LAN (IP LAN) was the only means by which partitions residing on the same enterprise partition platform, as well as partitions residing on different enterprise partition platforms, communicated with each other.

Secure fabrics offer increased security over the IP LAN—only partitions associated with a specific secure fabric can communicate with each other. As of release level 3.1, the IP-LAN secure fabric provides the functionality of the IP LAN for partitions on all platforms in the ClearPath Forward fabric. If you want a partition running release level 3.1 (or higher) to communicate with a pre-3.1 partition, you must explicitly associate the 3.1 (or higher) partition with the IP-LAN secure fabric.

Unisys recommends that all partitions commissioned on EPPs running with release level 3.1 or higher, and do not require access to partitions commissioned at release levels prior to 3.1, to only be associated with user-defined secure fabrics and not the IP-LAN secure fabric.

For more information on security and secure fabrics (including the IP-LAN secure fabric), refer to the ClearPath Forward Security Guide.

Interoperability with ClearPath Forward Dorado and Libra Systems

In earlier releases of the ClearPath Forward fabric, the Inter-Partition LAN (IP LAN) was the only means by which fabric-attached Dorado and Libra systems could communicate with ClearPath Forward enterprise partitions in the InfiniBand-based Interconnect.

ClearPath Forward Dorado and Libra hosts that are running on releases that do not support use of the secure fabrics feature cannot be assigned to a secure fabric other than the IP-LAN secure fabric. If you want prior release fabric-connected Clear path Forward Dorado and Libra systems to communicate with ClearPath Forward partitions running release level 3.1 (or higher), then you must explicitly associate the 3.1 (or higher) partition with the IP-LAN secure fabric.

All partitions included in the IP-LAN secure fabric can potentially access any other partition in the IP-LAN secure fabric. Unisys recommends that you take advantage of secure fabrics and organize partitions into discrete, self-contained secure fabrics.