Brocade Communications Systems 53-0001575-01 manual Two Switch Core Star SAN Design

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SAN Design: March 29, 2001 3:18 pm

FIGURE 10. Two Switch Core Star SAN Design

Two, single-switch cores

The strengths of this design are numerous. This provides lowest hop count design, uses the fewest switches for the given port count, has the best and easiest to analyze performance characteristics, and is the simplest to build, understand, and maintain. Support for more complex cores will be detailed in a future version of this document.

As long as the number of edge switches is equal to or less than the number of ports in each core switch, this design is the best to use. For example, if the core is comprised of 16-port switches, there can be up to 16 edge switches with a simple core design:

53-0001575-01

BROCADE Technical Note

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Contents SAN Fabrics Design and Best Practices Guide Design and Best Practices Guide Fabric Topologies Tier Architecture Designs Single fabric, non-resilient Approach to take to SAN design for high availability Hosts Sample Switc H Configura Tions Two Fabrics -- Simplest Redundant Fabric Configuration Extended Fabric Example Numbers above are labels for the links, see text Design Guidance Edge Two Switch Core Star SAN Design Design Criteria /TESTED AN D Supported Configurations Star Topologies Possible with 2 switch cores Three Tier Design used in Fabric Aware Testing at Brocade MUlti Tier SAN Design across an Extended Link Twenty Switch Three Tier Design also a Star configuration FOS Fabric Bring UP Valid and Invalid Configurations using Inter Switch Links ZONING/NAME Space Switch HOP Coun T SAN MAN Agement NON Public Devic ES AN D Existin G FC-AL Disk Equipmen T Brocade Technical Note Glossary Gbic Topology Copyright