Directors; Director Performance - HP 316095-B21 - StorageWorks Edge Switch 2/24 Planning Manual

Introduction to HP Fibre Channel Products

Directors

Directors provide high-performance, dynamic connections between end devices
such as servers, mass storage devices, and peripherals in a Fibre Channel switched
network. Directors also support mainframe and open systems interconnection
(OSI) computing environments and provide data transmission and flow control
between device node ports (N_Ports) as dictated by the Fibre Channel Physical
and Signaling Interface (FC-PH 4.3).
Because of high port count, non-blocking architecture, and FRU redundancy,
directors offer high availability and high-performance bandwidth.
Directors should be installed for:
Directors also provide connectivity between servers and devices manufactured by
multiple original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). To determine if an OEM
product can communicate through connections provided by a director, or if
communication restrictions apply, refer to the product publications or contact
your HP marketing representative.

Director Performance

Directors provide the following general performance features:
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Backbone implementation for a large-scale enterprise SAN that requires
centralized storage management, centralized backup and restore, data
protection, and disaster tolerance.
Mission-critical applications and switched data paths with no downtime
tolerance.
Performance-intense applications that require any-to-any port connectivity at
a high bandwidth.
High bandwidth — Each port provides full-duplex serial data transfer at a
rate of 2.125 Gbps.
High availability — To ensure an availability of 99.999%, director design
provides a redundant configuration of critical components with automatic
failure detection and notification.
Pairs of critical FRUs (logic cards, power supplies, and cooling fans) provide
redundancy in case of failure. When an active FRU fails, the backup FRU
takes over operation automatically (failover) to maintain director and Fibre
Channel link operation. High availability is also provided through concurrent
firmware upgrades and spare or unused Fibre Channel ports.
SAN High Availability Planning Guide