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Implementing SAN Internetworking Solutions
4
SAN Island Consolidation
SAN Island Benefits
SAN Island Problems
McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
4-2
SAN islands tend to be constructed along application (such as
product test, finance, or engineering), operating system (OS),
protocol, or geographical (site-based) boundaries. Because of
application and OS segmentation, large data centers at single sites
often consist of SAN islands constructed with relatively small Fibre
Channel switches.
A SAN island deployment strategy provides many benefits and may
be sufficient to meet an enterprise's needs because:
•
SAN islands serve a purpose. The enterprise buys a switch, builds
a simple fabric, and implements a SAN around a particular
application.
•
Data, applications, and operating systems are isolated to their
specific environment.
•
Failures do not cross SAN island boundaries. Fault isolation is
limited to each SAN.
•
Firmware revisions are specific to each deployed SAN and do not
have to be consistent enterprise-wide.
•
Specific functions (such as mission critical applications or test
environments) are isolated and do not interact with or corrupt
other functions.
Implementation and management of isolated SAN islands has several
problems, including:
•
A large number of fabric elements, storage devices, and servers to
administer from several workstations, possibly using multiple
SAN management applications.
•
No economy of scale to mitigate the costs of advanced fabric
features. Sophisticated management applications must be
purchased to administer each SAN. If high availability and
non-blocking performance are required, director-class switches
must be purchased for each SAN.
•
Complex interdependencies and data congestion because fabric
switches are connected with multiple interswitch links (ISLs). A
single low-cost edge switch can limit the scalability and
performance of an entire fabric.
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