Fabric Topologies; Mesh Fabric; Tape Drive Consolidation - McDATA StorageWorks 2/140 - Director Switch Planning Manual

Planning Considerations for Fibre Channel Topologies
3

Fabric Topologies

Mesh Fabric

McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual
3-14

Tape Drive Consolidation

Figure 3-8
Several topologies exist from which to build a Fibre Channel fabric
infrastructure. This section describes the most effective fabric
topologies and provides guidance on when to deploy each topology.
The topologies are effective for a wide variety of applications, are
extensively tested by McDATA, and are deployed in several customer
environments. Fabric topologies described in this section include:
• Mesh.
• Core-to-edge.
• Fabric (SAN) islands.
There are two types of mesh fabrics: full mesh and modified (or
partial) mesh. In a full-mesh topology, every director or switch is
directly connected to all directors and switches in the fabric. The
maximum hop count between fabric-attached devices is one hop.
Figure 3-9 illustrates the topology.