3 – Planning
Feature Licensing
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3.4
Feature Licensing
The SANbox 5600 Series switch can come from the factory as an 8-, 12-, 16-, or
20-port switch, enabling ports 0–7, 0–11, 0–15, or 0–19 respectively. You can
upgrade the SANbox 5600 Series switch to enable additional ports up to the
20-port maximum through the purchase of a license key.
Consider the number of ports that you require and the need for 10-Gbps ports.
Make arrangements to purchase the necessary license key from your switch
distributor or authorized reseller. Refer to ”Upgrading the SANbox 5600 Series
Switch” on page 4-28 for information about upgrading your switch.
3.5
Multiple Chassis Fabrics
By connecting switches together you can expand the number of available ports for
devices. Each switch in the fabric is identified by a unique domain ID, and the
fabric can automatically resolve domain ID conflicts. Because the Fibre Channel
ports are self-configuring, you can connect SANbox 5600 Series switches
together in a wide variety of topologies.
You can connect up to four SANbox 5600 Series switches together through the
10-Gbps ports, thus preserving the user ports for devices. This is called stacking.
SANbox 5600 Series switches divide the 10-Gbps port buffer to balance traffic
across the connection. The 10-Gbps ports operate with any standard XPAK
interface. If the 10-Gbps ports are not licensed, you can connect SANbox 5600
Series switches with other switches through the 1/2/4-Gbps ports in a wide variety
of topologies. Consider your topology and cabling requirements.
3.5.1
Optimizing Device Performance
When choosing a topology for a multiple chassis fabric, you should also consider
the locality of your server and storage devices and the performance requirements
of your application. Storage applications such as video distribution, medical record
storage/retrieval or real-time data acquisition can have specific latency or
bandwidth requirements.
The SANbox 5600 Series switch provides the lowest latency of any product in its
class. Refer to ”Performance” on page 3-4 for information about latency. However,
the highest performance is achieved on Fibre Channel switches by keeping traffic
within a single switch instead of relying on ISLs. Therefore, for optimal device
performance, place devices on the same switch under the following conditions:
Heavy I/O traffic between specific server and storage devices.
Distinct speed mismatch between devices such as the following:
A 2-Gbps server and a slower 1-Gbps storage device
A high performance server and slow tape storage device
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