Q-Logic SANBOX2-64 manual Common Topologies

￿	3 – Planning
	Multiple Chassis Fabrics

3.2.2

Common Topologies

The SANbox2-64 switch supports describes 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.

59043-01 A 3-5