Non-disruptive trading of buffers between ports or port virtual lanes of a credited network

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
• determining that a number of buffers allocated to a first port of a Fibre Channel (FC) device are to be reallocated to a second port of the FC device while maintaining the first port and the second port in an active state;
• causing a peer port connected to the first port to decrement, by the number, a transmit credit counter associated with the peer port;
• based at least in part on determining that the peer port decremented the transmit credit counter, releasing the number of the buffers from a buffer pool associated with the first port;
• and
• causing a reallocation of the number of the buffers to the second port.

A Fibre Channel (FC) device comprising;

• a port;
• a processor;
• and
• a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed, causes the processor to perform operations comprising:
• determining that a number of buffers are to be reallocated from a first virtual lane (VL) of the port to a second virtual lane of the port while maintaining the port in an active state;
• causing a peer port connected to the first VL to decrement, by the number, a transmit credit counter associated with the peer port;
• based at least in part on determining that the peer port decremented the transmit credit counter, releasing the number of the buffers from a buffer pool associated with the first VL;
• and
• causing the number of the buffers to be reallocated to the second VL.