Product Overview - HP 316095-B21 - StorageWorks Edge Switch 2/24 Planning Manual

Introduction to HP Fibre Channel Products

Product Overview

HP provides three broad classes of Fibre Channel switching products, as follows:
Directors and switches are managed and controlled through a High Availability
Fabric Manager (HAFM) appliance, available from HP with the HAFM, Director
2/64 Element Manager, Director 2/140 Element Manager, Edge Switch 2/16
Element Manager, Edge Switch 2/24 Element Manager, and Edge Switch 2/32
Element Manager applications installed. The HAFM appliance is a notebook
personal computer (PC) or 1U server that provides a central point of control for up
to 48 managed products (directors and switches).
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Directors — A director is a high port count, high-bandwidth switch designed
with fully redundant, hot-swappable field replaceable units (FRUs) that
provide an availability of 99.999% (approximately five minutes of down time
per year). HP offers the 64-port StorageWorks Director 2/64 and 140-port
StorageWorks Director 2/140.
The director implements Fibre Channel technology that provides
high-performance scalable bandwidth at 2 gigabits per second (Gbps), highly
available operation, redundant switched data paths, long transmission
distances (up to 50 kilometers at 2 Gbps or 100 kilometers at 1 Gbps), and
high device population. Refer to "Directors" on page 22 for detailed
information.
Edge switches — An edge switch is a low to medium port count,
high-bandwidth switch designed with redundant power supplies and cooling
fans that provide an availability of 99.9% (approximately 8.8 hours of down
time per year). HP offers the 12-port StorageWorks Edge Switch 2/12,
16-port StorageWorks Edge Switch 2/16, the 24-port StorageWorks Edge
Switch 2/24, and the 32-port StorageWorks Edge Switch 2/32 that operate at
2.125 Gbps.
These switches implement the same high-performance Fibre Channel
technology as the director, but with less redundancy, availability, and
expense. Refer to "Edge
Arbitrated loop switches — Fibre Channel arbitrated loop (FC-AL) switches
are low port count, low-bandwidth products. HP offers related products that
act as loop-switching hubs and fabric-attach switches. These switches provide
connectivity between attached FC-AL devices, and between FC-AL devices
and switched fabric elements. This connectivity allows low-cost or
low-bandwidth workgroup (edge) devices to communicate with fabric devices
(servers, storage devices, or other peripherals) and ultimately be incorporated
into an enterprise SAN environment.
Switches" on page 28 for detailed information.
SAN High Availability Planning Guide