- Cisco IP/Multiprotocol Label Switching Specification Sheet

4-2

Data Center High Availability Clusters Design Guide

OL-12518-01

Chapter 4 FCIP over IP/MPLS Core

Typical Customer Requirements

Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) represent about 90 percent of all companies in the United States.

These companies typically employ a few hundred employees and are highly focused on their core

services or products. They usually lack IT expertise and manpower to develop, deploy, and maintain

LAN, WAN, and SAN infrastructures. A typical SMB may have one or two offices in multiple metro

areas with one head office (corporate office) in one of the metro areas. The corporate office is considered

as the home office, where the majority of the business activities occur, and other locations are usually

designated as satellite offices where most of the activities are directed to the home office.

These SMBs use IP connectivity to connect between satellite and home offices. Connectivity varies from

Frame Relay, TI, and fractional Ethernet, depending on the demand and size of the SMB. Currently, these

networks are used to carry data and voice traffic. A similar connectivity is considered for storage, but is

not currently installed because of cost constraints. Most of the data at the home office location may be

consolidated into a local SAN, and the data at the satellite offices can be consolidated into small SAN

islands. This introduces the problem of storage connectivity between SAN islands for disaster recovery

and business continuance. There are several options to interconnect the SAN, but the IP network is the

ideal choice because of its availability at the client site and its comparatively low cost.

Figure 4-1 shows a typical customer SAN extension through an SP network.

Figure 4-1 SAN Extension Through SP Network

In most cases, the SMB customers have connectivity that is less than DS3 speed and, in some cases, may

be up to OC-3 speeds. Therefore, in some cases, compressing the Fibre Channel data before transporting

might become a requirement. In any network, security is key to protect valuable data from being misused

by intruders. FCIP traffic must be secured before transporting it across the SP network.

Fabric

132421

Cisco MDS 9216

Multilayer Edge

Switch

FCIP

Corporate HQ

Fabric

Bandwidth options:

DS1 – OC3 TDM Facilities

FastE and GigE Facilities

FCIP

Remote Sites

SprintLink

Network

Cisco7206 VXR

with FCIP PA

Cisco7206 VXR

with FCIP PA