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White Paper: Storage Fabrics using FocalPoint (PDF)

Using FocalPoint in Storage

FocalPoint has many features that make it an attractive solution for combining both the storage fabric and the network fabric in data center environments. The figure below shows how multiple iSCSI storage arrays, FCoE/FCIP storage arrays and servers can connect directly to the FocalPoint switch. Arrays used for longer term backup can be connected through the network to remote locations. Due to FocalPoint's low latency and congestion management, data centers requiring computer clustering could also replace their HPC fabric with the FocalPoint switch, unifying all three fabrics into one. This is a great savings in both up-front costs and cost of ownership and allows flexible data center deployment.

In the past, Ethernet could only satisfy 1Gb/s storage requirements. Now, FocalPoint opens the full range of data rates to storage system designers from 1Gb/s to 10Gb/s per port. In addition, FocalPoint can mix port rates on a single chip allowing the development of low-cost storage aggregation functions. FocalPoint can also directly connect to industry standard physical interface modules, which provide hot plug mechanisms and a variety of low cost cabling options including both copper and fiber.

Both latency and congestion management are important in storage networks. In applications that require a high rate of random storage access such as database processing, storage network latency can have an impact on overall system performance. In traditional Ethernet switches, congestion can lead to dropped packets requiring a retransmit at the IP layer. SCSI and FC class-2, which use acknowledge time-out methods, cannot tolerate these latency spikes.

FocalPoint, with its industry leading latency and congestion management is a perfect solution for these storage environments. With FocalPoint, you could separate the storage, network and HPC traffic into separate virtual fabrics using VLANs. By using strict priority and minimum bandwidth guarantees, maximum latency for storage traffic can be bounded. Storage data security can be enhanced using ACLs and storage applications such as VoD could be provided with features such as minimum bandwidth or traffic shaping. FocalPoint congestion management opens the door to new services and features for storage system vendors.