Qlogic QLogic Fibre Channel Switch Installation Guide download pdf (Page 43)

3 – Planning

Multiple Chassis Fabrics

59055-00 B 3-7

3.5

Multiple Chassis Fabrics

By connecting switches together you can expand the number of available ports for

devices. Each switch in the fabric is identified by a unique domain ID, and the

fabric will automatically resolve domain ID conflicts.

You can connect up to four SANbox 5200 switches together through the 10 Gbps

ports, thus preserving the user ports for devices. This is called stacking. SANbox

5200 switches divide the 10 Gbps port buffer to balance traffic across the

connection. The 10 Gbps ports operate with any standard XPAK interface. If the

10 Gbps ports are not licensed, you can connect SANbox 5200 switches with

other FC-SW-2 compliant switches through the 1Gbps/2Gbps ports in a wide

variety of topologies. Consider your topology and cabling requirements.

3.5.1

Optimizing Device Performance

When choosing a topology for a multiple chassis fabric, you should also consider

the locality of your server and storage devices and the performance requirements

of your application. Storage applications such as video distribution, medical record

storage/retrieval or real-time data acquisition can have specific latency or

bandwidth requirements.

The SANbox 5200 switch provides the lowest latency and highest bandwidth

capability of any product in its class. Refer to ”Performance” on page 3-4 for

information about latency and bandwidth. However, the highest performance is

achieved on Fibre Channel switches by keeping traffic within a single switch

instead of relying on ISLs. Therefore, for optimal device performance, place

devices on the same switch under the following conditions:

 Heavy I/O traffic between specific server and storage devices.

 Distinct speed mismatch between devices such as the following:

 A 2 Gbps server and a slower 1 Gbps storage device

 A high performance server and slow tape storage device

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Qlogic QLogic Fibre Channel Switch Installation Guide Page 43