How to make an informed choice of SAN switch ports
Nicholas Buckley
My main SAN is built around 2 x Brocade 48000 directors - 6 x 32-port cards
per chassis.
Whilst Brocade's documentation is very helpful on e.g. grouping connections
on ASICs to avoid traversing the backplane - and saving a whopping 1600
nanoseconds into the bargain :-) - it has rather less to say about best
practice in respect of what should ( or maybe should not ) be located on the
same ASIC.
With 2 ASICs per card and hence 16 ports per ASIC, there's ample scope for
co-locating FA ports, HBAs and especially native fibre-attached tape drives
on the same ASICs which may, or may not represent good design.
I suppose that, to a degree, it's inevitable with something like 90% port
occupancy ...
We don't have any performance issues, but if there's scope for a quick win
here and there, I'm open to suggestions.
Many thanks all,
Nick,
UK.