Building SANs with Brocade Fabric Switches
This reference functions as a set of instructions for actual SAN implementation and teaches how a well-crafted SAN can reward your organization.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Building SANs with Brocade Fabric Switches
Fibre Channel Storage
Selecting Fibre Channel storage depends on what kinds of applications and, most importantly, how much data and protection you need. Fibre Channel storage ranges from individual disk drives that support the Fibre Channel protocol, to devices with dozens of connections and different kinds of storage connection ports, such as Fibre Channel, SCSI, and Enterprise System Connection (ESCON). This section attempts to briefly describe the Fibre Channel aspects of this storage, but does not cover the very complex task of evaluating storage systems.
Individual Disk Drives and JBODs
Individual disk drives, although they support the Fibre Channel protocol, are rarely deployed alone in a SAN. In general, these individual disk drives are added to JBOD enclosures that hold four or more single disks in a single, loop-ready configuration. These drives are wired together into a miniature FC-AL loop with one or two ports to connect to the drives. The first port of a JBOD is generally wired to one of the dual ports on a disk drive, and the secondary port of the disk drives is wired on a secondary loop. To an HBA and system on the other side, there is no difference between a disk drive and a JBOD. In fact, you cannot tell that individual disks are tied together into a JBOD electronically or through software. Different JBOD systems differ in the number of ports, physical enclosure features, and individual disk drives used in the systems. Most JBOD systems do not add any actual Fibre...
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