Tape Backbone; Tape Backbone With 256-Port Connectrix Balanced Fabric - EMC Connectrix EC-1200 Planning Manual

Tape Backbone

Figure 4-12
A fabric offers a connectivity solution allowing many servers to share
a common high-end tape system. Tape backbone is one of the most
powerful solutions for large-scale environments. The performance
improvement and manageability opportunities achieved by moving
much of a backup's I/O load off the data center Ethernet and onto the
Enterprise Storage Network makes tape backbone an important
fabric application.
EMC Data Manager (EDM) can be used to illustrate the power and
flexibility of a fabric in a tape backbone application. Many servers
and their associated Symmetrix systems can be serviced by an EDM
server and a pair of tape libraries. The SCSI-based tape libraries
achieve fabric support through a pair of Fibre Channel-to-SCSI
bridges, as shown in Figure 4-12.
Server with
PowerPath
Connectrix
HBA
Domain ID 1
HBA
Connectrix
Symmetrix
Domain ID 3
FC/SCSI
Bridge
Tape
Library

Tape Backbone With 256-Port Connectrix Balanced Fabric

EDM Server
Connectrix
Domain ID 2
Connectrix
Domain ID 4
FC/SCSI
Bridge
Tape
Library
Multiswitch Topologies
Connectrix Topologies
Server with
PowerPath
HBA
HBA
Symmetrix
4-15
4