Comprehensive knowledge of smart Switches

A smart switch can perfectly support blade servers. This is the main difference between a smart switch and a traditional one. Some friends may ask, what is a smart switch? Is Traditional encapsulated storage (EMC/HDS) to be replaced by I-Swith smart switch Cisco?

The difference between a smart switch and a traditional switch is that it supports a dedicated "Blade" server with application functions, these include Protocol sessions, remote images, tape simulation, and Intranet file and data sharing. From an architecture with additional processing capabilities for each port and highly integrated bandwidth between blade servers, to a relatively simple architecture where each server is equipped with a dedicated processor, the architecture of the memory and the input and output functions used for communication between ports. Intelligent switching has many different architectures.

Different merchants use different names, such as "intelligent exchange", "application exchange", and "organization exchange", to make themselves stand out in the competition. Take Cisco's MDS9000 series as an example. There are blades that support applications such as Veritas Volume Manager and ibm san volume controller SVC. These blades can coexist with other blades, including Fiber Channel ports and IP servers.

Brocade 7420 multi-protocol router is another example of a switch with advanced intelligence. It was initially used to support protocol conversion from a small computer interface to a fiber channel ), segmentation and routing of SAN and IP-based Remote Storage Using FCIP protocol. Other vswitches support some specialized blades, which cover the range from Maxxan to Marranti. CNT and McData also announced their plans to support specialized blades.

For smart switches and structured devices, pay attention to the potential performance and effectiveness impact. For example, will using a smart switch increase or decrease the input/output speed between your server and the storage subsystem? Will more functions and applications run on the vswitch, or will these added devices reduce the input and output speeds of other devices? Do we need a redundant smart switch to avoid unexpected failure of components or devices?

Regarding whether your traditional storage system will be replaced by smart switches, I would like to say that these traditional storage systems will not disappear in the foreseeable future. On the contrary, you will see that the storage system we mentioned will be combined with smart switches and storage routers to achieve convergence and disk aggregation. In fact, what is happening is that convergence and disk aggregation work together with data images, remote replication, and data movement, which are generally referred to as storage services and virtual storage. The most important thing is to understand the potential benefits of using smart switches and the impact of smart switches on your organization in terms of management, support, performance, and feasibility.