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Physical Planning Considerations
5
Extended-Distance
Ports
High-Availability
Considerations
Fibre Channel
Cables and
Connectors
McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
5-6
Through longwave laser transceivers and repeaters or wavelength
division multiplexing (WDM) equipment, directors and fabric
switches (but not Sphereon 4300 or 4500 Switches) support Fibre
Channel data transmission distances of over 100 km. The extended
distance feature is enabled on a port-by-port basis by using entries in
the RX BB Credit column for a specified port at the Element Manager
application's Configure Ports dialog box. This feature provides
extended distance support using Fibre Channel protocol. Refer to
Distance Extension Through BB_Credit
When a director or fabric switch port is configured to support
extended link distances, the attached device (or attached fabric
element) must also support extended distance operation and be
configured to use a higher BB_Credit value to maintain link
efficiency. If the extended distance feature is enabled for a port that is
not installed or does not support extended distance operation, the
configuration for the feature is ignored.
To provide high device availability, critical servers, storage devices,
or applications should be connected to more than one fabric element
(director or switch) or to more than one fabric. To determine if
dual-connection capability exists for a device, refer to the associated
device documentation. To provide high fabric availability, consider
the use of multiple fabric elements (directors and switches), multiple
ISLs, or redundant fabrics. Refer to
Plan to maintain unused (spare) director and switch ports if port
connections must be quickly moved and re-established after a failure.
If an individual port or an entire port card fails, optical transceivers
or port cards can be removed and replaced, spare port connections
identified (through the Element Manager application), and fiber-optic
cables rerouted and reconnected while the director or switch is
operational.
This section provides Fibre Channel cable and connector planning
information as follows:
•
Cables for directors, fabric switches, and SAN routers.
•
Intrepid-series director, Sphereon-series fabric switch, and
Eclipse-series SAN router optical connectors.
for additional information.
Fabric Availability
for information.
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