Fibre Channel Primer

44 Fibre Channel: Connection to the Future
Manual Control Station
Figure 6.7 Link switches deliver low-cost reconfigurable systems
Whether it is a switch, an active hub, or a loop is irrelevant,
because station management issues related to topology are not handled
by Fibre Channel ports but are the responsibility of the switch.
Selecting the topology for an enterprise or application is
determined by the system performance requirements, packaging
options, and the user’s growth requirements.
Fibre Channel variations in topology, Classes of Service, and
physical layers offer an unprecedented capability for delivering
unmatched performance, matching implementation to application
needs.
The key point is that one N_Port / NL_Port design is compatible
with all switch implementations. As discussed earlier, Fibre Channel
matches the application requirements with multiple topologies:
l Point-to-point, dedicated bandwidth
l Loop shared bandwidth
l Switched scaled bandwidth
POINT-TO-POINT, DEDICATED-BANDWIDTH TOPOLOGY
Point-to-point topology is available in two varieties. The first is simply
two N_Ports connected and exchanging information. The second
(shown in Figure 6.7) is when an externally controlled link switch is
used to set up different point-to-point configurations. In both cases,
Servers
Switch
RAID
Workstations