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Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies
3
Fabric Topologies
Mesh Fabric
McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
3-14
Tape Drive Consolidation
Figure 3-8
Several topologies exist from which to build a Fibre Channel fabric
infrastructure. This section describes the most effective fabric
topologies and provides guidance on when to deploy each topology.
The topologies are effective for a wide variety of applications, are
extensively tested by McDATA, and are deployed in several customer
environments. Fabric topologies described in this section include:
•
Mesh.
•
Core-to-edge.
•
Fabric (SAN) islands.
There are two types of mesh fabrics: full mesh and modified (or
partial) mesh. In a full-mesh topology, every director or switch is
directly connected to all directors and switches in the fabric. The
maximum hop count between fabric-attached devices is one hop.
Figure 3-9
illustrates the topology.
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