Q-Logic 64 manual Common Topologies

D

3 – Planning Multiple Chassis Fabrics

3.2.2

Common Topologies

The SANbox2-64 switch supports three commonly used fabric topologies:

„Cascade

„Mesh

„Multistage®

A cascade topology describes a fabric in which the switches are connected in a linear fashion. If you connect the last switch back to the first switch, you create a cascade-with-a-loop topology. The loop reduces latency because any switch can route traffic in the shortest direction to any switch in the loop. The loop also provides failover should a switch fail.

A mesh topology describes a fabric in which each chassis has at least one port directly connected to every chassis in the fabric.

A Multistage topology describes a fabric in which two or more edge switches connect to one or more core switches. Each additional core switch increases the bandwidth to each edge switch by 200 MB/s.

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