Table of Contents
Advertisement
Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies
3
McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
3-22
•
Bandwidth - ISL connections can be used to increase the total
bandwidth available for data transfer between two directors or
switches in a fabric. Increasing the number of ISLs between
elements increases the corresponding total ISL bandwidth but
decreases the number of port connections available to devices.
Table 3-1
illustrates ISL transfer rate versus port availability for a
fabric consisting of two Intrepid 6064 Directors.
Table 3-1
ISL Transfer Rate Versus Fabric Port Availability
(Two-Director Fabric)
Number of
ISL Data Transfer Rate
ISLs
(at 1.0626 Gbps)
1
1.0625 Gbps
2
2.1250 Gbps
3
3.1875 Gbps
4
4.2500 Gbps
5
5.3125 Gbps
6
6.3750 Gbps
7
7.4375 Gbps
8
8.5000 Gbps
•
Load balancing - Planning consideration must be given to the
amount of data traffic expected through the fabric or through a
fabric element. Because the fabric automatically determines and
uses the least cost (shortest) data transfer path between source
and destination ports, some ISL connections may provide
insufficient bandwidth while the bandwidth of other connections
is unused.
To optimize bandwidth use and automatically provide dynamic
load balancing across multiple ISLs, consider purchasing and
enabling the OpenTrunking feature key. For information about
the feature and managing multiple ISLs, refer to
and
General Fabric Design
ISL Data Transfer Rate
(at 2.1250 Gbps)
2.1250 Gbps
4.2500 Gbps
6.3750 Gbps
8.5000 Gbps
10.6250 Gbps
12.7500 Gbps
14.8750 Gbps
17.0000 Gbps
Considerations.
Available
Fabric Ports
126
124
122
120
118
116
114
112
OpenTrunking
Advertisement
Table of Contents
