Avoiding address duplication

When creating your BOFM configuration file, it is best practice to avoid address duplication.

Attention: Duplication of MAC addresses can cause serious issues with your network. Fibre Channel address duplication can lead to data corruption, if more than one blade is trying to access the same volume at the same time.

To ignore the duplicated addresses and apply the configuration anyway, click Ignore. To avoid the address duplication check, you can also select the Ignore duplicate virtual addresses in the configuration file advanced option on the Apply a Configuration window.

To avoid duplicate addresses, the AMM performs the following actions:
  1. When a new configuration file is applied, the AMM verifies that it does not contain internal duplicate addresses.
  2. Before applying the configuration, the AMM verifies that the blades that are about to be re-configured are powered off. This ensures that no addresses are currently in use.
  3. Before writing the new BOFM configuration to the blades, the AMM disables the BOFM configuration on all the blades that are about to be re-configured. As a result, there can be no address duplication even if the operation has not completed.
For flexibility, the user can override these checks and apply the configuration even if the AMM generates warnings that duplicate addresses might exist. In addition, if the user defines the same address, in two different configuration files, for two chassis that are on the same network, then the AMM can not protect against address duplication.

To avoid address duplication, it is best practice to use a single configuration file for a single network domain and not use the options to override the protection that the AMM provides.