Directors - McDATA StorageWorks 2/140 - Director Switch Planning Manual

Introduction to McDATA Multi-Protocol Products
1

Directors

McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
1-6
Refer to Chapter 2, Product Management
management applications and the management server. Chapter 2 also
describes switch management through:
• The Internet using a product's EFCM Basic Edition interface.
• Inband (Fibre Channel) application clients.
• Simple network management protocol (SNMP) workstations.
• A command line interface (CLI) or PC-attached Telnet session.
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).
Because of high port count, non-blocking architecture, and FRU
redundancy, directors offer high availability and high-performance
bandwidth. Directors should be installed for:
• Backbone implementation for a large-scale enterprise SAN that
requires centralized storage management, centralized backup and
restore, data protection, and disaster tolerance. Refer to
Fabric Design Considerations
• 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.
Directors also provide connectivity between servers and devices
manufactured by multiple 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 McDATA.
for information about SAN
for information.
General