Fabric-side or Switch-side Implimentation in SAN

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FC SAN:
* FC Switch or Fabric in SAN architecture consists of Ports (GBIC or SFP in it), FC protocol stack, Fabric Operating system & Fabric Controller units.
* The Fabric provides basic functionality of connecting multiple Hosts & Storage Sub systems together and manages the communication between them. using Fabric switch topology, about 16 million devices can be connected together in SAN Network.
* Each port on the Swicth is having Unique Address called as World Wide Node Name (WWWN) & World Wide Port Name (WWPN).
* In addition, Fabric provides advanced functionalities as given below,
1. Multi casting & Broad casting services.
2. Name Server Database services.
3. Login Services.
4. Register state Change Notification [RCN] Services.
* Fabric Zoning is the important feature provided by FC switches, By appropriately creating zones and assigning devices [HOST + storage LUNs], an administrator can create a network in which individual hosts cannot access storage devices that are controlled by another host in the FC network.

iSCSI SAN:
* iSCSI Switch or Ethernet Swicth in SAN architecture consists of Ports (ethernet ports), TCP/IP & iSCSI protocol stack, switch software & Controller units.
* The ethernet iSCSi swith provides basic functionality of connecting multiple Hosts & Storage Sub systems together and manages the communication between them.
* Each port on the Swicth is having Unique Address called as World Wide Unique Identifier (WWUI) & there are three different address format, iqn (iscsi Qualifier Name format by CiSCO), eui (Extended Unique Identifier by IEEE), naa (Network Address Authority by T11 organization).
* In addition, Fabric provides advanced functionalities as given below,
1. Uni-Casting, Multi-casting & Any-casting services.
2. Routing Database services.
3. Login Services.
* VLAN Configuration which is similar to Fabric Zoning in FC SAN.

Note:
* More info. on FC Fabric, Zoning & iSCSI Networking will be published in upcoming Posts.