Arbitrated Loop To Switched Fabric Connectivity - HP StorageWorks 64 - SAN Director Switch Planning Manual

Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies
The switch B_Port provides a single 1.0625 Gbps ISL to an E_Port on a director
or edge switch. Direct ISL connectivity between loop switches (with or without a
redundant B_Port connection to a director or edge switch) is generally not
supported. However, a director or edge switch does support the connection of
multiple, independent switches.
switches attached to a director.
Figure 31: Arbitrated loop to switched fabric connectivity
Consider the following when planning arbitrated loop-to-switched fabric
connectivity and incorporating FC-AL devices into the enterprise SAN
environment:
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B_Port traffic is routed through a user-transparent FL_Port that is embedded
on the switch's control processor (CTP) card. Switch mode (shared or
switched) has no impact on B_Port operation. However, because all
switch-attached FC-AL devices must arbitrate for access to the embedded
FL_Port, loop performance issues (loop round-trip time, number of loop
tenancies, service rate, and loop utilization) must be evaluated.
Figure 31 shows a configuration of two loop
SAN High Availability Planning Guide