Storage fabric switch are a hardware and software switchs that moves data that is coming from a storage network port to another port path without broadcasting to all ports (port to port connectivity).
Note: Most of the fiber channel network switches design employ two separate fabric switches for redundancy but in small storage arrays you still see one switch
When using switches in storage arrays we need to create zones in the switch and combines the server with the storage array, in switch terms connecting nodes together in the fabric.
The process of storage zoning is simple.
- Create alias for the server or servers (optional naming instead of using wwn)
- Create alias for the array or arrays (optional naming instead of using wwn)
- Create a zone that combines the server to the array
I am going to focus in my articles on how to manage fiber switches, firmware upgrade and troubleshooting.