Emulex 375 manual Storage Consolidation and Shared Storage Pooling, Switch Applications

EMULEX MODEL 375 SAN STORAGE SWITCH	CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
USER’S GUIDE

SWITCH APPLICATIONS

The Emulex Model 375 SAN Storage Switch is ideal for consolidation and shared storage pooling, high- performance shared tape library backup and recovery, server clustering, and streaming rich media applications. The following sections provide examples of these applications.

Storage Consolidation and Shared Storage Pooling

In this configuration, the switch enables multiple hosts to share single or multiple storage systems. This application replaces direct-attached configurations that require multiple storage systems to be attached to separate servers, which often results in difficult to manage multiple systems and trapped, unused storage islands (storage cannot be shared with other servers).

Figure 1-1: Before storage consolidation... Figure 1-1: and after storage consolidation.

Benefits include:

•Improved incremental scalability–connect up to 20 hosts and/or other storage devices, including tape libraries, to a single switch.

•Lower storage management support costs.

•Improved capacity utilization that enables effective use of both servers and storage.

For larger system environments, multiple switches can be connected and Automatic Trunking can be used to keep performance and availability at high levels. As a best practice when using multiple switches, connect servers and their related storage devices through the same switch to optimize performance.

Figure 1-2: Multiple switch storage consolidation diagram

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