Stackable Switches: A Better Way To Scale SAN Infrastructure
Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs), once considered only for high end enterpise class data centers, are becoming more commonplace as interoperability concerns are alleviated and prices for Fibre Channel equipment gradually decrease. As SANs become more widely adopted it becomes very important to find more cost effective infrastucture solutions without sacrificing perfomance. Current solutions for growing the SAN infrastructure beyond sixteen ports sacrifice either price or bandwidth. Linking Fibre Channel switches together through 2 Gb/sec Fibre Channel ports provides limited bandwidth. Using multiple ports to link the switches together can increase bandwidth, but consumes many of the switch ports at the cost of thousands of dollars.
The Qlogic 5200 Fibre Channel stackable switch brings high perfomance switch stacking into the Fibre Channel world. As previously proven in the Ethernet switching market, high performance links between switches that do not sacrifice user ports can provide excellent scalability at a reasonable cost. In the case of the SANbox 5200, these high performance links are connected via four industry standard 10 Gb/sec Fibre Channel ports allowing connectivity between switches without consuming 2 Gb/sec device ports. The Sanbox 5200 provides high performance, stackable switching for the Fibre Channel SAN along with future migration capabilities to 10 Gb/sec Fibre Channel at an exceptional price.