Introduction To Fibre Channel Sans: Student Guide

Introduction to
Fibre Channel SANs

FCSAN-101
Student Guide
Revision 1220
FCSAN-101
Copyright © 2020 Broadcom. All Rights Reserved. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom
Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
Broadcom, the pulse logo, Connecting everything, Brocade, the stylized B logo, and MyBrocade
are registered trademarks of Broadcom in the United States and/or in other countries. The
term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
Notice: This document is for informational purposes only and does not set forth any warranty,
expressed or implied, concerning any equipment, equipment feature, or service offered or to
be offered by Brocade. Brocade reserves the right to make changes to this document at any
time, without notice, and assumes no responsibility for its use. This informational document
describes features that may not be currently available. Contact a Brocade sales office for
information on feature and product availability. Export of technical data contained in this
document may require an export license from the United States government.
Revision: December 2020

FCSAN-101 Introduction to Fibre Channel SANs
Revision 1220 1-1

Revision 1220 1-2

Revision 1220 1-3

Revision 1220 1-4

Revision 1220 1-5

Revision 1220 1-6

Revision 1220 1-7

Revision 1220 1-8

As the name implies, a storage area network or SAN is one or more dedicated networks used
to connect host servers to network attached storage devices.
Most SANs are built using Fibre Channel switches and directors. A link that interconnects a
switch or director to another switch or director is called an inter-switch link or ISL.
Fibre Channel is a high-speed data transfer protocol commonly running at 8, 16, and 32 gigabit
per second rates but also supports speeds of 1, 2 and 4 gigabits per second. It provides in-
order, lossless delivery of raw block data.
A single Fibre Channel storage network is called a fabric and consist of one or more network
switches and directors connected to each other. A SAN can contain one or more fabrics.
Revision 1220 1-9

Here are the standard components that make up a SAN:

1. Host - A Fibre Channel host is a server with a Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter installed. A
host bus adapter is typically called an HBA and connects a server, which acts as the host
system, to to Fibre Channel, FICON and NVMe storage devices. In storage area network
(SAN) environments, they are typically used to connect hosts to the Fibre Channel network,
FICON and NVMe storage.
2. Storage - A block based storage device. The term is used to describe dedicated storage
hardware such as drive arrays that contain spinning hard disk drives (HDD) or solid-state
drives (SSD). SSD arrays are also know as all-flash arrays (AFA) and NVMe flash arrays.
Tape backup systems are also considered storage devices.
3. Switch - A Fibre Channel switch is a fixed form factor network device that provides
connectivity between host servers and storage within a SAN).
4. Director - A Fibre Channel director is a modular, chassis-based networking device that
provides connectivity between host servers and storage within a SAN.
Revision 1220 1 - 10
The SAN is used to connect host servers to network attached storage devices such as storage
arrays and tape backup devices. In our example, we see three hosts servers connected to SAN
1, Each server has a connection to Fabric A and a connection to Fabric B. The hosts are
accessing a shared storage array, which is also connected to both Fabric A and B within SAN
1.
When referring to a single fabric, the term SAN and fabric are interchangeable but when a SAN
contains two or more fabrics, the term SAN refers to all of the fabrics which make up the SAN.
In our example, the three hosts are able to access the same shared storage through both
Fabric A and Fabric B. This is called a dual fabric. A dual fabric SAN provides redundancy and
most SANs are typically designed with two or more redundant fabrics. If a problem occurs
within a fabric, the hosts maintain access to the storage through the other fabrics.
Host servers connect to both the SAN as well as the traditional Ethernet network used for client
server connectivity. A clients on the Ethernet network, for example an office PC, sends and
receives email from a corporate email server. However, the email server is actually using
network attached storage over the Fibre Channel SAN for its email storage.
SAN management applications such as Brocade’s SANnav Management Portal can be used to
monitor and manage SANs.
An N_Port is used for node devices that will be initiating and responding to end-to-end storage
commands. A device that initiates a storage command is called an initiator and is typically a
server. A device that receives and responds to the storage commands is called a target and is
typically a storage device such as a storage array or tape library. Note that there are times
when a storage port may be an initiator. For example when a storage device is coping or
moving data to another storage device. The storage N_Port that is coping the data is the
initiator of the command request and the receiving storage N_Port is the target.
An F_Port, or fabric port, is a switch port that connects to an N_Port. F_Ports are responsible
for routing command requests and replies to N_Ports in the fabric.
A World Wide Name, typically referred to as a WWN, is a 8 byte globally unique hexadecimal
address used to identify each Fibre Channel node and the ports in the node. A Fibre Channel
node can be a switch, HBA or storage controller. A storage device will have one or more
controllers that contain external ports used to connect the storage to the SAN. A storage
controller is similar to an HBA used by servers. Each node has a World Wide Node Name,
also called a WWNN, assigned to it by the manufacture. The manufacture also assigns a
World Wide Port Name, or WWPN, to each port in the node. For example, a two port HBA will
have three WWNs, one WWNN and two WWPNs. The same is true for a switch or director
which has a single WWNN assigned that identifies the unit and each port on the switch or
director is also assigned a unique WWPN.
Referring to the graphic, we see a server with a two port HBA installed with both ports
connected to a switch. The graphic shows an example of the WWNN for both the server HBA
and the switch; as well as the WWPNs assigned to the two ports being used to connect the
HBA to the switch. Looking at the second byte of the server WWPN you will see that the first
one is 00 and the second is 01. These numbers represent the port number for the two ports on
the HBA, ports 0 and 1. You can see the same thing with the switch ports. The HBA ports are
connected to switch ports 4 and 5.
To learn more about WWNs as well as other details about the Fibre Channel protocol we
recommend taking the FC-120 Fibre Channel Fundamentals course.
A zone is a specified group of fabric-connected devices, also called zone members. Devices
can only communicate with other devices in the same zone. Devices can be members of
multiple zones and, as shown in the figure above, zones can overlap.
Once zoning is enabled any device not defined in a zone will be unable to communicate.
Devices are grouped into zones as zone members, zones are grouped into a zone
configuration. A fabric can have multiple zone configurations defined; but only one
configuration may be enabled at any time.
Zoning is a fabric wide configuration, changes made on any switch in the fabric will be
propagated to the entire fabric. Changes in zoning will send RSCNs only to devices that are in
the same zone and therefore affected by the change.
For more information on zoning see the Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide.
There are three ways to define a device as a member of a zone.

• You can use a devices WWPN or WWNN to add it to a zone. When you use WWN zoning
to define zone membership, the device can be plugged into any available port on any switch
in the fabric and zone enforcement is active regardless of where the device is attached in
the fabric.
• You can select a switches domain ID and port number (or port index) to be a member of a
zone. Any device plugged into the specific switch port will be a member of the zone. A
domain ID is a number from 1-239 assigned to each switch in the fabric and it must be
different on each switch in the fabric.
To learn more about zoning I recommend taking the Brocade ZONE-120 Zoning course.
• Access Gateway – Access Gateway is a special mode that some Brocade switches support.
A switch in Access Gateway mode that’s attached to a fabric will not merge with the fabric
but rather function as a gateway; allowing host servers attached to the Access Gateway to
login into the fabric.
• Fabric Extension – Fabric extension is an important part of storage networking and Fibre
Channel. Brocade supports two Brocade has solutions for extending a fabric over distance.
The first is long distance ISLs (LD). With LD ISLs you use special equipment, such as long
distance optics or Wave Division Multiplexers, to connect a Fibre Channel ISL between two
Brocade switches or directors which can up to 100 kilometers apart. When greater distances
are required, or you want to use an existing IP network for you long distance solution, Fibre
Channel over IP (commonly referred to as FCIP) is a great solution. For FCIP, Brocade has
extension products that are used to extend Fibre Channel fabrics over long distances by
tunneling Fibre Channel over IP links. The extension products also supports IP extension for
native IP SANs.
• FCR – Another advanced feature is Fibre Channel routing, referred to as FCR. Sometimes
you have two or more fabrics that you want to share resources between but don’t want to
merge those fabrics together. FCR is our best solution in this case.
• Trunking - Fibre Channel trunking is a commonly used feature. The Brocade ISL trunking
feature optimizes the use of bandwidth by allowing a group of ISLs to merge into a single
logical ISL called a trunk or trunk group.
• Virtual Fabrics – The last feature on this list is Virtual Fabrics. Virtual Fabrics allows you to
take a single physical switch or director and divide it into multiple logical switches.
Small SANs usually start with just one or two switches.
A single switch or director is the simplest SAN solution and recommended for small
deployments. It provides locality between hosts and storage and is well suited to higher port
count switches and directors. Scalability (ease of expandability) is limited by the switch port
count, availability is limited to switch and director field replaceable components (FRU) and is
less resilient to failures do to the single switch or director design.
A cascade topology is two or more switches or directors connected in series. This topology is
best suited when the fabric is limited to two switches or directors. A cascade requires fewer
inter-switch links (ISL) then a ring or mesh topology but if the cascade contains multiple hops
through the fabric, lower performance may be experienced and fabric availability can be
effected if a switch fails. With this topology the SAN starts small, stays small and maintains a
high level of device locality with only a single hop between switches, provided the topology is
restricted to only two switches.
A ring topology is a variation of the cascade. In this design the last switch/director in the
cascade is connected back to the first switch/director forming a ring. The benefits of a ring are
the same as a cascade but with better performance and availability. Unlike a cascade, A single
switch failure anyware in the ring will not prevent connectivity between the others switches in
the fabric. Scalability is still limited with this design and best suited for fabrics with three to four
switches/directors.
Since cost, ease of deployment, and management are important, consider using higher-port
count switches in growth situations. More ports means a greater probability of locality, thus
leveraging the local switching features of the architecture allowing for fewer ISLs required.
A high level of scalability is also vital when planning for growth. Single switch, cascade and ring
topologies can be expanded into more advanced topology designs that provide greater
resiliency, availability and redundancy if planned correctly.
A full mesh topology connects every switch or director to each of the other switches in the
fabric. Each switch in the full mesh is always one hope from every other switch in the fabric. It
also provides greater resiliency than either the ring or cascade topologies but lowers the
number of available user ports do to the additional ISLs required, as well as limiting the
scalability of the fabric.
A variation of the mesh topology is the partial mesh. In this design, each switch is connected
to most of the other switches but not all of them. The partial mesh increases the number of
available ports which can be used for additional user ports or to increase the fabric size but will
increases the maximum hop count to two between some switches while also decreasing some
of the fabric resiliency.
The core/edge topology specializes the role of switches and directors. Hosts servers and
storage are typically connected to the edge switches & directors, while core switches are used
to connect the core switches to the edge switches. In some designs, one edge is used for host
connectivity (the host edge/tier) while the storage is attached to the other edge (storage
edge/tier). In some designs, storage, and possibly hosts, may also be attached directly to the
core, depending on design requirements and scalability needs. For example, storage arrays
can be attached directly to two or more cores and hosts attached to the edges. This reduces
the number of hops to required by one for a host to reach its storage.
A core/edge design provides excellent scalability, availability, and performance.
Adding a new Edge switch requires connections only to the core switches making this a highly
scalable topology. Having multiple core switches also makes this is a highly resilient topology. A
switch or director failure in fabric does not prevent access between any of the other switches.
Also, the core/edge design is not restricted to two core switches. Also, a core/edge design can
include three or more cores which allows the fabrics in the SAN to scale with the largest SAN
deployments utilizing this design.
Core/edge provides the best mix of scalability, performance, and availability but at a higher cost
to deploy.
Regardless of whether you are using a single switch fabric or a core/edge fabric design, a dual
fabric design significantly increases SAN availability.
In the example, we have two fabrics. In both fabrics, a two switch cascade design is being used
with a two port ISL trunk connecting the two switches within each fabric. Recall, the Brocade
ISL trunking feature optimizes the use of bandwidth by allowing a group of ISLs to merge into a
single trunk. ISL trunking creates a fault-tolerant, high bandwidth, logical ISL that withstands
the failure of individual ISLs within the trunk; while also reducing congestion on the individual
ISLs.
Each host server has a single Fibre Channel link to both fabrics and the storage array has two
connections to each fabric.
With this design, the storage has both resiliency with two links to each fabric and redundancy
with connectivity to both fabrics. Each fabric has resiliency with a two port ISL trunk between
the two switches. But the servers only have redundancy with one connection to each fabric.
However, even though the servers do not have resilient links to each fabric, If they lose access
to one fabric, they can still maintain access to the storage through the second redundant fabric.
When the storage infrastructure requires availability, scalability, performance, extensibility,
manageability and security Fibre Channel is the most capable solution.

Introduction To Fibre Channel Sans: Student Guide

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Introduction To Fibre Channel Sans: Student Guide

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Introduction To Fibre Channel Sans: Student Guide

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Introduction to

Fibre Channel SANs

Revision: December 2020

Revision 1220 1-1

Revision 1220 1-2

Revision 1220 1-3

Revision 1220 1-4

Revision 1220 1-5

Revision 1220 1-6

Revision 1220 1-7

Revision 1220 1-8

Revision 1220 1-9

Here are the standard components that make up a SAN:

There are three ways to define a device as a member of a zone.

Small SANs usually start with just one or two switches.

You might also like