Dell PowerVault 56F Dell PowerVault 56F 16-Port Fibre Channel Switch Inst - Page 31

This chapter discusses some key factors affecting fabric performance, including the following: Fabric elements Sample fabric topologies Each fabric is unique and the elements that determine the fabric's structure include: Class of frames in the fabric Type of host adapters connected to the fabric Bandwidth requirements supported by the fabric Topology of the switches in the fabric Requirements for redundancy and fault tolerance Regardless of the topology used, the switch's extremely low message latency minimizes fabric message handling time that results in a high-performance fabric. All Inter Switch Links (ISLs) have a default cost of 1000. The cost of a path between any two switches in the fabric is the sum of the costs of all ISLs. The switches that comprise the fabric always choose the lowest cost path through the fabric to forward frames from the source switch to the destination switch. When constructing a multiswitch configuration, called a cascaded fabric, a frame entering the fabric may pass through eight switches before exiting the fabric. The switch does not enforce the eight-switch limit. It is your responsibility to ensure that the seven-hop limit is not exceeded. The uRouteShow command provides support.dell.com PowerVault 56F 16-Port Fibre Channel Switch Topologies 2-1