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3 – Planning
Multiple Chassis Fabrics
59096-04 A 3-7
A
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 can automatically resolve domain ID conflicts. Because the Fibre Channel
ports are self-configuring, you can connect SANbox 5000 Series switches
together in a wide variety of topologies.
You can connect up to four SANbox 5000 Series switches together through the
10-Gbps ports, thus preserving the user ports for devices. This is called stacking.
SANbox 5000 Series 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 active, you can connect SANbox 5000
Series switches with other switches through the 1/2/4-Gbps 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 5000 Series switch provides the lowest latency of any product in its
class. Refer to “Performance” on page 3-3 for information about latency. 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