Technical Analysis of fiber channel switches

Fiber Channel SwitchProvides Fiber Channel switching for high-bandwidth and Low-latency data communication. Currently, fiber channel switches provide connectionless services (Class2 and 3 ).Optical fiber switchDirectly connect to the initiator and target using the optical fiber network routing software, so that you can enjoy all the bandwidth of the optical fiber. This means that each connection in the optical fiber can exist independently and does not interfere with other connections.

The number of ports of an optical fiber switch ranges from 8 to 64, or even more, including SMART switching hardware, so that any two points of all ports of the switch can be connected. Fiber switches can be stacked through E_Ports. This method can extend the fiber network to thousands of nodes, and the number of switch stacks can reach up to 239.

A large SAN is implemented by connecting multiple switches in a mesh network. Each vswitch has a one-way connection to other vswitches in the network. In the example in Figure 2, The vswitch used has port 16. As the number of switches in the network increases, the percentage of ports used for inter-Switch Connection increases. This is one of the reasons why the FC switch port is expensive. In a mesh SAN core network consisting of six switches with a total of 96 ports, there are 30 vswitches and 66 user ports.

Vswitches greatly improve the performance of optical fiber networks, such as name services, management services, and more complete device connection protocols. Vswitches are used in most environments as a complete mechanism to provide host-to-array connections, especially in multi-device and multi-boot environments.

Fiber Channel switches are at the core of SAN storage architecture. The fiber channel switch is logically the core of SAN and connects hosts and storage devices. Fabric infrastructure can be seen as the foundation of SAN. When a device sends a frame of data to the switch, the switch routes the frame to the target device.

In fact, a frame can be forwarded before it is fully received. Fiber Channel switches are also intelligent. They can provide various Fabric services, including services for locating other nodes on the Network (simple name service). They can automatically establish routes with other switches in Fabric, you can also partition devices to monitor and handle errors.

Fiber Channel switches provide many different functions, including GBIC, Fan redundancy and power supply, partitioning, ring operation, and multi-management interfaces. Each function increases the operability of the entire switching network. Understanding these features can help users design a powerful large-scale SAN.

The main functions of an optical fiber switch are as follows: Self-configured ports, loop device support, switch cascade, adaptive speed detection, configurable frame buffering, and partitioning (based on physical ports and WWN-based partitions) IP over Fiber Channel (IPFC) broadcast, remote logon, Web management, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and SCSI interface independent device Service (SES.

Optical fiber switches are often divided into different categories based on their functions and features. Generally, the hardware may be based on the same basic architecture or the same ASIC chip, but the software functions are different. The price of the Fiber Channel switch is determined based on the requirements it can meet. A high-redundancy core-level switch is an exception. It is often developed and designed based on its own hardware fault-tolerant platform. The following describes the different features of vswitches of various major categories.