Fabric Switches - McDATA StorageWorks 2/140 - Director Switch Planning Manual

Introduction to McDATA Multi-Protocol Products
1

Fabric Switches

McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
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— Optical paddles that operate at 1.0625 or 2.1250 Gbps provide
eight Fibre Channel port connections through duplex SFP
fiber-optic transceivers. A fully-populated director supports
up to 256 port connections at 1.0625 or 2.1250 Gbps data rates.
— Optical paddles that operate at 10.2000 Gbps provide two
Fibre Channel port connections through duplex XFP
fiber-optic transceivers. A fully-populated director supports
up to 64 port connections at the 10.2000 Gbps data rate.
Shortwave laser transceivers are available for transferring data
over multimode fiber-optic cable. Longwave laser transceivers
are available for transferring data over singlemode fiber-optic
cable. Fiber-optic cables attach to director port transceivers with
duplex LC connectors.
In similar fashion to directors, fabric switches also provide high-
performance, dynamic connections between end devices in a Fibre
Channel switched network. Fabric switches also support mainframe
and OSI computing environments.
Through non-blocking architecture and limited FRU redundancy,
fabric switches also offer high availability and high-performance
bandwidth. Although switches do not offer the redundancy,
availability, or port count of an enterprise-class director, they offer a
much lower-cost connectivity option. Fabric switches should be
installed for:
• Implementation as the principal building block of a small-scale
SAN or as a consolidation point for enterprise-class SANs.
• Departmental and workgroup connectivity.
• Applications where distributed storage predominates.
Fabric switches also provide connectivity between servers and
devices manufactured by multiple OEMs. To determine if an OEM
product can communicate through switch connections or if
communication restrictions apply, refer to the product publications or
contact McDATA.