Spectra T950 - Drive Connectivity

Chapter 2 — Architecture Overview Fibre Channel Connectivity
November 2016 User Guide—Spectra T950 Library
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Dual-Port Connectivity Asanalternativetotheconfigurationsthatusea
singleportforeachpartition,dual‐portconfigurationsusebothinterface
portsasasinglecommunicationspathtothesamepartition.Theportscan
beconnectedtothesameordifferentSANs.Thehostsonthenetworkcan
useeitherporttocommunicatewiththerobotics.Adual‐port
configurationallowsahosttohaveanalternate,redundant,pathtoreach
thepartition.Notallhostsoftwarecansupportthistypeofconfiguration.
Notes:  Thetwoportscannotbeusedsimultaneously.
 Thistypeofconfigurationcannotbeusedincombination
withtheControllerFailoverfeature(seeControllerFailover
onpage77).
Drive Connectivity
ThedrivesinthelibrarycanhaveeitheraFibreChannelinterfaceoraSCSI
businterface.
 FibreChanneldrivesconnectdirectlytothehostusingaFibreChannel
arbitratedlooporfabric,asdescribedinPartitionsUsingDirect‐
AttachedFibreChannelDrives.
 SCSIdrivesuseanF‐QIPtoprovidetheFibreChannelconnectivity,as
describedinPartitionsUsingQIP‐AttachedSCSIDrivesonpage74.
TheF‐QIPactsasabridgetoconnectSCSIdrivesintheDBAtoaFibre
Channelfabricorarbitratedloop.TheterminatorforeachSCSIbusin
theDBAisinstalledonthedrive’sexternalLVDSCSIconnector.
Keepinmindthatallofthedrivesonanarbitratedloopmustsharethe
datatransfercapacity(bandwidth)oftheinterface.Havingmultiple
devicesonthesameloopcannegativelyimpacttheperformanceofallthe
devices.
Figure 36 Examples of a dual-path and dual-port
configurations.
A
B
SAN
SAN1
A
B
SAN2
Controller
—OR—
Dual-path connection to the same SAN
Dual-port connection to different SANs
Controller