SAN Design: March 29, 2001 3:18 pm
53-0001575-01 BROCADE Technical Note Page: 8 of 31
•Switch upgrades can take place on one SAN (firmware, hardware, both) and while this SAN is down the
redundant SAN stays in operation
•A switch failure in one SAN allow for failover to the redundant SAN while the failed switch is replaced.
•Eliminates the single point of failure in the system - while highly meshed and redundant connections in a sin-
gle fabric are possible, the overall design of the SAN when installed as a redundant set of device inter-connects is
simpler to maintain and provides insurance against failure of a single fabric
2.3 SAMPLE SWITCH CONFIGURATIONS
This section provides a number so switch fabric designs using the topologies defined above. Simple switch designs are shown along with
more complex meshed fabric designs, Tier Architecture designs, and Star topology designs. This section also provides guidance on the
overall size in the form of port counts that can reliably be deployed today. As testing is completed for larger port count topologies they will
be added to this document.