and global business continuity solu-
tions. This extended distance connec-
tivity can help create consolidated
remote tape vaulting data protection
plus metro mirror and global mirror
disk-based disaster tolerant solutions.
High performance
The IBM System Storage SAN04B-R
multiprotocol router is designed to
deliver 4, 2 and 1 Gigabit per second
(Gbps) full-duplex Fibre Channel or
50 Megabit per second Ethernet line-
rate performance on all ports. Each
router FC port auto-negotiates to 4 or
2 or 1 Gbps depending on the speed of
the device at the other end of the link.
The Ethernet ports enable reliable SAN
extension across the Internet, IP-based
Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs)
and Wide Area Networks (WANs)
through the use of Fast Write,
hardware-based compression and
storage-optimized protocol
enhancements.
High-availability features
Mid-size SAN users require high-
availability fabric solutions. The
IBM System Storage SAN04B-R multi-
protocol router uses second-generation
advanced application-specific inte-
grated circuits (ASIC) electronic compo-
nents to help minimize the number of
components and improve reliability. The
SAN04B-R router is designed to pro-
vide hot-swappable, load-sharing dual
redundant power supplies that allow
the router to remain online if one power
supply fails. Dual power cords allow
attachment to separate power sources
for improved availability. Hot-swappable
power supplies and redundant cooling
fans help eliminate downtime for service
when replacing a failed component.
Hot-pluggable SFP transceivers are
designed to be replaced without taking
the router offline.
High availability solutions require redun-
dant components, including clustered
servers with dual Host Bus Adapters,
dual independent fabrics and disk stor-
age arrays with dual controllers each
with dual adapters. Dual IBM System
Storage SAN04B-R routers may be
configured in a high availability solution
to create a resilient “meta” SAN
infrastructure.
Configuration flexibility
A variety of SFP transceivers are avail-
able to meet diverse requirements.
Standard short wave optical Fibre
Channel SFPs are available to connect
at distances up to 1500 meters. Long
wave optical Fibre Channel SFPs are
available to connect at distances of up
to 4 km, 10 km or 30 km. Optical SFPs
are always used to connect the FC
ports to a Fibre Channel fabric, how-
ever both optical and copper SFPs are
available to connect the Ethernet ports
to an Ethernet fabric.
The router helps provide full Fibre
Channel fabric services with many stan-
dard features including WEBTOOLS
with Advanced Zoning, FCIP Tunneling
Service and Extended Fabric.
Fabric Operating System
Brocade® Fabric OS® (FOS) is
included with each SAN04B-R and
contains all functions necessary to
operate a base system. The SAN04B-R
requires FOS level 6.1.0 or higher. FOS
offers the following advanced functions:
●
ADVANCED PERFORMANCE MONI-
TOR helps identify end-to-end
bandwidth usage by host/target
pairs and is designed to provide for
capacity planning.
●
TRUNKING enables FC packets to be
efficiently distributed across multi-
ple ISLs between two IBM SAN
b-type fabric switches and directors
while preserving in-order delivery.
Both SAN b-type devices must have
trunking activated.