Users Guide

Introduction 1-1
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The Dell™ PowerVault™ 51F is an 8-port Fibre Channel switch that consists of a sys-
tem board, microprocessor board, connectors for supporting up to four dual-port
interface cards, and firmware for building and managing a fabric. A
fabric
is an active,
intelligent, and nonshared interconnect scheme for Fibre Channel server and storage
nodes. One or more switches interconnected create a Fibre Channel fabric.
Figure 1-1 shows the switch view of a PowerVault 51F.
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This chapter discusses:
 PowerVault 51F switch features
 Performance
 Manageability
 Reliability
 Serviceability
 System components
 Switching function
 Embedded port
 System firmware
 Universal ports
 Short-wave laser (SWL) fiber-optic gigabit interface converter (GBIC) module
 Long-wave laser (LWL) fiber-optic GBIC module
 Copper GBIC module
 Hot-pluggable power supplies