Fibre Channel Fabrics; Figure 10-1. San-Attached Cluster Configuration - Dell PowerEdge Cluster FE100 User Manual

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Figure 10-1. SAN-Attached Cluster Configuration

Fibre Channel Fabrics

A Fibre Channel switch fabric is an active, intelligent, and private connection of one or
more fibre channel switches that provide high-speed, point-to-point connections
between servers and storage devices. Using instructions that are programmed into
the switch, the switches in a Fibre Channel fabric provide a point-to-point connection
through inbound and outbound points from one device (sender) to another device or
switch (receiver) on the network. If the data is sent to another switch, the process
repeats itself until a connection is established between the sender and the receiver.
Fibre Channel switches are linked together using interswitched links (ISL). These ISLs
use two high-speed serial data connectors (HSSDC) or two subscriber connectors
(SC) to connect the switches. Each ISL is considered a "hop." While a Fibre Channel
LAN/WAN
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SAN Components 10-3