Q-Logic 16HA Switch User Manual


 
Preliminary
Introduction
SANbox-16HA Fibre Channel Switch
Installer’s/User’s Manual 59005-03 Rev. A Multi-Chassis Fabrics 5-3
Choosing a Topology
The topology you choose depends on the following major fabric requirements:
The size of the fabric (number of user ports required),
The amount of latency the users can tolerate (number of chassis hops and
interconnection media delay between the source port and the destination
port),
The bandwidth between chassis (the number of T_Port paths between inter-
connected chassis),
The physical distances required between users in a “campus” distributed
fabric verses a centrally located fabric.
MKII compatibility. SANbox switch fabrics support MKII switches as IO/T
chassis in mesh and Multistage topologies.
These topics are discussed for each topology later in this section.
NOTE:
In order to set up a multi-chassis fabric you are required to select a topology, cable
the chassis together, and configure each chassis.
Configuration consists of assigning a stage type to a chassis which tells it which
function it is to perform (IO/T or CC). In the case of a Cascade or Mesh topology,
all chassis are the default stage type (IO/T). A Multistage switch consists of IO/T
and CC chassis. For addressing purposes, you must also assign a Chassis Number
to each chassis.
Refer to“Cascade Topology” on page 5-5, “Mesh Topology” on page 5-9, and
“Multistage Topology” on page 5-12 for information about choosing a fabric
topology. After choosing the fabric topology, refer to “Cabling” on page 5-17 and
“Chassis Configuration” on page 5-18 for the remaining instructions.