Brocade Communications Systems 53-0001575-01 manual Design Guidance

SAN Design: March 29, 2001 3:18 pm

2.7SAN BUILD ING BLOCK - MESHED FABR IC CON SISTIN G OF TWO STAR TOPOLOGIES CONNECTED BY A MESH

FIGURE 7. SAN Building Block showing expansion to 17 switch Mesh Fabric

SW

SW SW

SW SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

•An atomic building block of 8 switches (star) for larger SANs

•Design can be expanded horizontally or vertically- horizontal expansion shown above using mesh design

•Redundant paths through the fabric by having at least two inter- switch links per switch

•Note: nodes can be on exterior switches or on interior switches. This will enable hosts/storage to be co-located on a switch if the application/data is closely associated with the host. Or, the interior switches can be used for storage devices shared by hosts on the exterior switches, eliminating a hop in the host<--->storage connection

•This basic 8 switch design with single ISL’s accommodates 104 end nodes

•When merging, connect the core switches using mesh

DESIGN GUIDANCE

-Recommend use of FOS version 2.1.9g/2.2.2 or higher

-Do not exceed 17 switches in this topology

-No more than three inter-switch links per edge switch

-Maximum ports 220 (single ISL)

-Max hops 6

-Take advantage of any known locality

53-0001575-01 BROCADE Technical Note Page: 12 of 31