FW 05.01.00 and SW 07.01.00 HP StorageWorks SAN High Availability Planning Guide (AA-RS2DC-TE, June 2003)

Introduction to HP Fibre Channel Products
18 SAN High Availability Planning Guide
Directors
Directors provide high-performance, dynamic connections between end devices
such as servers, mass storage devices, and peripherals in a Fibre Channel switched
network. Directors also support mainframe and open systems interconnection
(OSI) computing environments and provide data transmission and flow control
between device node ports (N_Ports) as dictated by the Fibre Channel Physical
and Signaling Interface (FC-PH 4.3).
Because of high port count, non-blocking architecture, and FRU redundancy,
directors offer high availability and high-performance bandwidth.
Directors should be installed for:
■ Backbone implementation for a large-scale enterprise SAN that requires
centralized storage management, centralized backup and restore, data
protection, and disaster tolerance.
■ Mission-critical applications and switched data paths with no downtime
tolerance.
■ Performance-intense applications that require any-to-any port connectivity at
a high bandwidth.
Directors also provide connectivity between servers and devices manufactured by
multiple original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). To determine if an OEM
product can communicate through connections provided by a director, or if
communication restrictions apply, refer to the product publications or contact your
HP marketing representative.