HP Cisco MDS 9140 Cisco MDS 9000 Family Storage Media Encryption Configuration - Page 24

About Cisco Storage Media Encryption Chapter 1 Product Overview Send documentation comments to [email protected] FC-Redirect Cisco SME performance can easily be scaled up by adding more Cisco MDS 9000 family switches or modules. The innovative Fibre Channel redirect capabilities in Cisco MDS 9000 NX-OS enable traffic from any switch port to be encrypted without SAN reconfiguration or rewiring. Server-Based Discovery for Provisioning Tapes Cisco SME provides discovery of backend targets using the identity of the host during a session establishment. Target-Based Load Balancing The Cisco SME cluster consists of a set of switches (in a dual-fabric environment) running the Cisco SME application. Clustering offers target-based load balancing of Cisco SME application services. The cluster infrastructure allows the Cisco SME application to communicate and coordinate to maintain consistency and high availability. Load balancing is achieved by distributing ownership of the various metadata objects throughout the cluster. Cisco SME assigns hosts to the available Cisco SME interfaces using the following algorithm: • All hosts for a given target port are always assigned to the same Cisco SME interface. • If a target port is connected to one of the Cisco SME switches, an interface is selected based on the load from the target-connected switch. That is, the target locality is considered when choosing a Cisco SME interface for a target. • If a target is connected to a switch that has no Cisco SME interface, then the target is assigned to the least loaded available interface in the Cisco SME cluster. In target-based load balancing, the load on an interface refers to the number of targets assigned to that interface. Caution The load balancing command is disruptive to traffic. Ensure that you execute this command at a scheduled downtime, otherwise, the existing traffic will be affected. SME Scalability The following features improve the scalability and performance of the Cisco SME application by minimizing the network overhead and maximizing the overall throughput: • The SME application supports the batching of messages where messages of the same type are combined and sent as a single message. This feature saves a significant amount of overhead and minimizes the number of messages between the SME process and the cluster process. The reduction in the traffic load substantially reduces the CPU usage of these processes. • The FC redirect process is optimized by caching the FC redirect messages. This feature reduces the number of identical messages that are generated each time a new ITL is configured, which reduces the total number of backend messages. Cisco MDS 9000 Family Storage Media Encryption Configuration Guide 1-6 OL-18091-01, Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.x