Application of Gigabit Ethernet switches in the storage industry

The non-blocking mechanism of GE Ethernet switches provides full-line rate switching for your network, making it easy for you to use. In the network, hardware and software are just tools, the most valuable information is the information flowing in the network. With the accumulation of enterprise information data, the demand for information data backup and sharing is growing, and the requirements for storage are also increasing.

The complexity of enterprise systems has been greatly improved, and databases have been widely used. More and more enterprises are involved in unified data storage, synchronization, and sharing. Data centralization requires high storage stability and security, leading to the adoption of high-performance and high-price storage systems. Because of the high investment, enterprises certainly share applications to the maximum extent, which in turn promotes higher centralization. This trend leads to an increasing access to storage points and an increasing access bottleneck.

Nowadays, many applications require unified storage, and the storage technology has also evolved to NAS network storage. Even with the simplest DAS, the server's SCSI hard disk is a gigabit port on the storage end. Almost 100% of NAS storage devices provide Gigabit copper interfaces. The storage mode of the DAS structure plays a dominant role in the server, while 90% of servers provide Gigabit copper interfaces. There is no doubt that the use of a Gigabit Ethernet switch with a gigabit copper interface at the storage point has a great advantage, that is, it can solve the storage bottleneck with a low investment.

Another problem is that in small and medium-sized local networks, you do not need to increase the bandwidth of the terminal to save investment while solving the storage bottleneck. Most of the Gigabit Ethernet switches on the market are 1-gigabit copper cables, and the prices are high. In small and medium network applications, Gigabit copper cables and common 10/100 interfaces should be a cost-effective choice. How do I select the most suitable Gigabit Ethernet switch? In the market, there are not many 10/100 Ge Ethernet switches with gigabit copper interfaces. I think there are three most cost-effective Ethernet switches:

1. Edimax ES-5224R +

Edimax ES-5224R + is a simple Gigabit Ethernet switch with 24 10/100 ports and two 1000 m copper ports. Its main performances include:

A. Support for full-line speed and Flow Control: the non-blocking mechanism of the Gigabit Ethernet switch provides full-line speed switching for your network, so as to ensure that the communication bottleneck is not caused by the switch. Vswitch back pressure/IEEE 802.3x) ensures reliable data transmission to prevent packet loss, and improves network performance and reliability.

B. Support for Auto-MDI/MDI-X: each port of the switch can automatically identify the line sequence type of the straight and cross lines, so you don't have to worry about what sort of line UTP cable to use.

C. Support for VLAN functions: the Gigabit Ethernet switch supports Port-based and VLAN-based labeled 802.1Q tags, allowing you to comprehensively improve network performance.

D. Support for port aggregation Trunking) function: You can use the Trunking function to bind several ports and provide a larger bandwidth aggregation channel between the switch and the switch, and between the switch and the server.

E. quality service (QoS) support: with QoS, you can define the priority level for users or certain applications to use the network. users or applications are classified by different priority levels, when a data packet enters the cache of the switch, the network is always preferentially used when the priority is higher than the priority.

2. D-LINK DES-1026G

The D-LINK DES-1026G is a standard Gigabit Ethernet switch with 24 10/100 ports and two 1000 m copper ports. It can be said that it is a switch designed for medium and small network solutions to solve storage and server bottlenecks. Port supports automatic line sequence crossover with consistent stability of D-LINK products. This product is well positioned and priced, making it the best choice for the transition from 100 Mbit/s Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet. In the market, many switch dealers will recommend this product to you, because this Gigabit Ethernet switch is easy for users to accept.

3. Netgear FSM726

Netgear FSM726 is a two-port 1000 M vswitch with 10/100 TB + 24 ports and 10/100 M network management. Rich L2 management functions, such as VLAN Virtual LAN (VLAN), trunking link aggregation), QoS service quality), DiffServ, RADIUS client, and broadcast storm control. It is known as NETGEAR's most economical Gigabit Ethernet switch. In fact, we can see from the panel that FSM726 has two 1-gigabit electrical ports and two 1-gigabit GBIC ports, but the corresponding upstream and downstream 1-gigabit electrical ports and 1-gigabit GBIC ports can only use one of them. This design facilitates customers who have optical fiber requirements, although there will be a slight increase in costs. As a professional vendor for Small and Medium-sized applications, Netgear is relatively high, but with its foreign background, it also has certain requirements in the market.

Driven by various applications, Ethernet will inevitably go to gigabit network. However, on the eve of the full application of gigabit network, the most urgent storage and server bottlenecks can be solved, and network efficiency can be greatly improved, it is the best choice to solve practical problems.