32 SAN Director Blades (May 2007)

The HP StorageWorks 4/256 SAN Director is the most advanced B-series director-class switch

ever, that provides the state of the art in reliability, performance and scalability for Storage Area

Networks (SANs) in mission critical enterprise environments.

The flexible 4/256 SAN Director architecture utilizes a wide variety of blades for increasing port

density or introducing multiprotocol capabilities. IT organizations can easily mix the various

blades in the 4/256 SAN Director to address unique business requirements and ensure an

optimal price/performance ratio. The following are available (with more planned):

 4/16 Port Fibre Channel Blade

 4/32 Port Fibre Channel Blade

 4/48 Port Fibre Channel Blade

 B-Series MP Router Blade

 B-Series iSCSI Blade (available in June)

This paper describes the technical difference between the 48 port blade and the 16/32 Port

Blades. In addition to summarizing the architectural advantages of the FC Port Blades, this paper

explains how the various blades used in the platform can help optimize performance to address

specific requirements.

In the 4/256 SAN Director, each port blade has Condor ASICs that expose a certain number of

ports for connectivity and a certain number of ports to the control processors via the backplane.

The director uses an ASIC layout analogous to a core/edge topology. The layout is symmetrical:

all ports have equal access to all other ports. The director can switch frames locally if the

destination port is on the same ASIC as the source.

4/16 Port Blade

On the 4/16 Port Blade, all ports have 64 Gbit/sec (128 Gbit/sec full duplex) of possible external

input, and the same internal bandwidth available. In other words, the blade has a 1:1

subscription ratio. It is useful for extremely high-performance shared storage subsystem and

SANs with unpredictable traffic patterns.

The 4/16 Port Blade is highly integrated with just one active switch in component (the ASIC) and

associated support components – a design that results in lower power and cooling requirements

as well as higher MBTF.

4/32 Port Blade

The 4/32 Port Blade is designed with a 16:8 subscription ration at 4 Gbit/sec for non-local traffic,

and 1:1 ratio at 2Gbit/sec for any traffic pattern. If some or all of the attached servers and storage

devices run at 2 Gbit/sec, or if I/O profiles are “bursty,” the 32 port blade typically provides the

same performance as the 16 port blade.

4/48 Port Blade

At 24:8, the 48-port blade has a higher backplane over subscription ratio but also has larger port

groups to take advantage of locality. The backplane connectivity of this blade is identical to the

32-port blade. The only difference is that, rather than just 16 ports per ASIC, the 4/48 port blade

exposes 24 outward facing ports (96 Gbit/sec or 192 Git/sec full duplex of local switching per

ASIC).

This blade is especially useful for high-density SAN deployments where:

-Large numbers of servers need to be connected to the director

PAGE 1
The HP StorageWorks 4/256 SAN Director is the most advanced B-series director-class switch ever, that provides the state of the art in reliability, performance and scalability for Storage Area Networks (SANs) in mission critical enterprise environments. The flexible 4/256 SAN Director architecture utilizes a wide variety of blades for increasing port density or introducing multiprotocol capabilities.
PAGE 2
-Some or all the hosts are running below line rate much of the time -Potential localization of most traffic flows is achievable The technical differences between the 4/48, 4/32, and 4/16 Fibre Channel Blades are:  No FICON support for 4/48 SAN Director Blade The HP StorageWorks 4/48 SAN Director Blade is not supported to connect to the System z environments via FICON channels or via FCP zLinux on System z.
PAGE 3
The HP StorageWorks 4/32 SAN Director Blade has 624 credit left for long distance while, due to the increased port count, the HP StorageWorks 4/48 SAN Director Blade only has 560 credits left for long distance.  Port Mirroring Port mirroring is restricted to one F port mirroring allowed between shared areas for ports 16-47. Port mirroring on ports 0-15 behaves the same as the 4/32 SAN Director Blade. See the HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 5.2.x administrators guide for more information on port mirroring.