FIBRE CHANNEL SAN

FS SAN (Fibre Channel Storage Area Network) is typically used for sharing block level
storage through high speed low latency network. The Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) enables the
transmission of the SCSI protocol over an FC SAN by encapsulating it within FCP frames. It is
also a network that is used to share block storage devices. Block devices are essentially raw
gadgets that, in all practical terms appear to be the same to the host operating system and
hypervisor devices that are close by. Additionally, there are no higher degrees of added
abstractions, such as filesystems to them. This implies that the host accessing the block storage
device is responsible for adding filesystems in an FC SAN setup.

Some major components in an FC SAN include Initiators, Targets, and FC switches. Both
initiators and targets are SCSI concept that can be compared to clients and servers in the client-
server networking paradigm. Targets are similar to servers, while initiators are similar to clients.
Over the FC SAB, initiators give read and write commands to targets. The SAN consists of one
or more FC switches that connect the targets and initiators.

Initiators are host ports that are HBA (host bus adapter) or CNA (converged network
adapter) while Targets are also ports in a storage array or tape library. The HBA & CNA are PCI
devices that can be installed on the server’s motherboard or as PCI expansion cards. The drivers
for these devices make them show up to the host OS of the hypervisor’s host OS as local SCSI
when on an FC SAN. Each HBA and CNA has a set of exclusive hardware resources that it uses
to remove all FCP-related overhead from the host CPU and memory. HBAs and CNAs
frequently support optical transceivers or copper direct-attach cables (DACs). The SFP or SFP+
modules are frequently used as transceivers. SFP stands for tiny form-factor pluggable while
SFP+ is an improved version that allows faster data rates, including 10 GB Ethernet.
 There are advantages and disadvantages to the conventional method of installing direct-
attached storage within servers. One benefit is that it may be accessible by short, dedicated, low-
latency, and contended-free interconnects (SCSI bus). This ensures easy and dependable access
to gadgets. But, some disadvantages are increased management, limited utilization capacity
islands, and small numbers of devices such as disk drives.

FS SAN components are made up of some physical and logical components. These are
HBA and CAN, FC switches and directors, FC storage arrays, FC cabling, FC fabrics, FC simple
name server, Zoning, FC addressing, FC classes of service, and VSAN technology. In physical
components, a SAN consists of end devices and switches at a very high level. The switches are
used by the end devices to communicate. End devices are also referred to as node ports, or N
Ports.

FC switches and directors contain numerous physical ports that support the FC Protocol.
It provides connection between end devices such as hosts and storage. The physical ports will be
either optical or copper SFP/SFP+ supporting either FCP or (data center bridging) DCB
Ethernet/FCoE. In an FC SAN, a switch port can be U_Port, N_Port, F_Port, E_Port, EX_Port.
When it comes to the FC ports speed, HBA ports, switch ports, and storage array ports be set up
to auto negotiate their speed which includes 2, 4, 8, 16 Gbps. FCoE/DCB Ethernet ports
commonly operate at 10 and 40 GB.

Every FC switch must have a domain ID. It is a numeric string that is used to distinguish
the switch in the fabric. The principal switches are responsible f or managing the distribution of
domain IDs within the fabric and they are fabric's reliable source for time. FC Hubs were used to
connect FC-AL devices that require all devices to share bandwidth and arbitrate to ensure that a
single device could only communicate at a particular time. FC storage arrays frequently contain a
large number of disk and flash drives which are distributed via the FC SAN as block devices
known as LUNs or volumes.
 In FS SAN Cabling, data is transmitted through optical fiber in the form of light produced
by lasers or LEDs. The utilization of optical is possible in Top of Rack (ToR) and End of Row
(EoR) circumstances. Optical fiber cables can be Multi-Mode Fiber that transfers light from
shortwave lasers and Single-Mode Fiber that transfers light from a longwave laser. Core,
Cladding, and Jacket are its major components. The Standard Connector and Lucent Connector
are the most common cable connectors which are both available in multi and single-mode cables.

LOGICAL SAN COMPONENTS

The FCP Stack includes FC-4, FC-3, FC-2, FC-1, and FC-0. The FC Fabric is a group of
connected FC switches with a similar set of services that is viewed and controlled as single
logical entity. A distributed database of all devices registered in the fabric is the FC simple name
server (SNS), also known as the name server. All devices must register with the name server.

SAN Zoning is a technique for dividing a SAN into discrete, smaller mini-SANs. It
controls the visibility of a device in a SAN fabric. The best zoning practices are to keep zones
small, to have one initiator in each zone, to keep a small number of targets in a zone, to give
meaningful names, and to take great care when making zoning changes in your environments.
SAN TOPOLOGIES

Common SAN Topologies are point-to-point, arbitrated loop, and the various switched
fabric topologies. Point-to-point or FC-P2P establishes a direct link between a host HBA or CNA
port and a storage array port. It is simple and provides zero scalability. Arbitrated Loop or FC-
AL enables the connection of devices in a loop topology through an FC hub. Core-Edge
Topology is the most extensively used topology wherein the fabric resembles an old hub-spoke
or star network topology. Cascade Topology and Ring Topology connects switches in a row but
the two end switches of the latter are connected making it less hideous than the cascade. Mesh
Topology has every switch in a SAN interconnected with one another to ensure that the network
highly resilient and efficient and guarantees that every switch is only one hop away from every
other switch.

Simple FC-P2P configuration

Cascade Topology
Core-Edge Topology

Mesh Topology

Alyazia Hareth Sulaiman Ali Alfulaiti

A00059964

Thank you 