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support.dell.com SAN Configurations 2-5
DELL CONFIDENTIAL - Preliminary 3/16/00
(Rev. 11/3/98) FILE LOCATION:
S:\SYSTEMS\San\San2_0\I&T_Guide\English\91WYJ_A00\91WYJc20.fm
The following sections describe the various SAN components.
Within a SAN, a host bus adapter (HBA) provides the connectivity from the host com-
puter system to the external Fibre Channel device.
The QLA2100 HBA is a high-performance, direct memory access (DMA) bus master
Fibre Channel HBA designed for high-end systems. The card includes a 64-bit Periph-
eral Component Interconnect (PCI) 2.1 interface (fully backward compatible with 32-
bit PCI systems), a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor, and a Fibre
protocol module (FPM) with gigabit transceivers. This adapter supports copper media
through a High Speed Serial Data Connector (HSSDC). For additional information, see
Appendix A, “Cable Types.”
The QLA2100F is a short wave optical version of the QLA2100 and provides fiber-optic
connectivity from the host computer system to external storage or switches.
The QLA2200 and QLA2200F HBA supports a 33-megahertz (MHz), 64-bit PCI host
interface (fully backward compatible with 32-bit PCI systems), a RISC processor, a
Fibre Channel protocol engine, dedicated transmit and receive frame buffers, inte-
grated 106.25-megabytes per second (MB/sec) Fibre Channel serial transceivers, an F-
port fabric login, and full-duplex operation.
The QLA2200F is an SW optical version of the QLA2200 and provides fiber optic con-
nectivity from the host computer system to external storage or switches.
The Dell PowerVault Fibre Channel switches (currently the PowerVault 50F and
PowerVault 51F) are 8-port Fibre Channel switches for building and managing a SAN.
The switch is the key component of a SAN whose primary function enables true Fibre
Channel fabric configurations. The PowerVault Fibre Channel switches are necessary
for PowerVault 600 family configurations that include more than two servers.
The PowerVault Fibre Channel switches allow multiple servers to access a single
PowerVault Fibre Channel drive array. The Fibre Channel switch functions much like an
Ethernet switch. The devices (a server, a drive array, or another switch) that are
attached to the switch can all communicate with each other. Without the switch, no
more than two servers can attach to the same PowerVault array, due to the number of
connections on each storage processor (SP) in the Dell 650F/651F disk processor
enclosure (DPE).
In a fully redundant SAN configuration, at least two switches are required. Each
switch connects to one SP in the PowerVault 650F/651F DPE, and, in turn, provides
access to all logical unit numbers (LUNs) bound on that SP to all servers connected to