Brocade Communications Systems 53-0001575-01 - page 14

SAN Design: March 29, 2001 3:18 pm
53-0001575-01 BROCADE Technical Note Page: 14 of 31
FIGURE 10. Two Switch Core Star SAN Design
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:
Two, single-switch cores