Typical SAN (Storage Area Network) - introduction to FC SAN network architecture

      SAN (Storage Area Network) Storage Area Network is a block-based storage that utilizes a high-speed architecture to connect storage devices such as servers and disk arrays. In this network, all servers can read and write to storage devices, characterized by high throughput and low latency. Common network architectures are FC SAN based on FC (Fibre Channel) and IP SAN based on iSCSI. this article focuses on FC SAN network architecture based on FC .
      FC is mainly used to build storage networks with high-speed transmission, FC SAN in the architecture is usually used as a transmission medium, the current transmission speed of Fibre Channel has reached 128Gb/s. The following figure gives a typical FC SAN network topology.

Figure 1 a typical FC SAN network topology

      FC storage devices, mainly refers to disk arrays, tapes and other carriers that can store data, can be understood as the PC's "hard disk", the "hard disk" capacity is very large, and can be expanded according to actual demand;
      FC switches, used to connect storage devices and MDC servers, workstations \ servers, responsible for storage devices and workstations \ servers between the actual data of high-bandwidth, low-latency transmission, the mainstream FC switch vendors are Brocade and CISCO;
      MDC server, Meta Data Controller, can be understood as a "scheduler", workstations \ servers in the access to the data in the FC storage device before consulting it where the data, and then directly to the corresponding location in the storage device to access the data;
      A workstation\server can be understood as a variety of users;
      Ethernet switches, which are used to connect the MDC server and each workstation\server, and are responsible for the transmission and exchange of metadata information between the MDC server and each workstation\server as well as the workstation\server;
      Moduletek Limited can provide Brocade and CISCO compatible FC8G, FC16G, FC32G and other FC optical module products.
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