McDATA Sphereon 4300 Specifications download pdf (Page 178)

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McDATA Products in a SAN Environment - Planning Manual

Implementing SAN Internetworking Solutions

Implementing BC/DR Solutions

The post-9/11 business environment requires corporations to protect

critical data by implementing cost-effective business continuity and

disaster recovery (BC/DR) solutions. These BC/DR solutions drive

the requirement to extend local data center SANs to geographically

distant locations.

The business case for SAN distance extension is the high cost of

downtime, a period during which a corporation cannot generate

revenue due to temporary (or permanent) loss of critical applications

or data. By connecting SAN islands through an extended-distance

optical network, the corporation:

• Preserves valuable information assets and protects against

business disruptions caused by facility outages, IT or

communication problems, natural disasters, or terrorism.

• Provides real-time disaster recovery of business data and the IT

infrastructure in the event of an unplanned outage.

• Consolidates storage resources, increases the availability of

critical information, and reduces backup and restore times.

• Complies with regulatory, data protection, and data retention

requirements imposed by the government and business insurers.

BC/DR solutions impose distance extension requirements to connect

SAN islands. Extended-distance data transmission imposes different

communication and protocol requirements. Differences between

storage traffic through a local SAN and network traffic through an

extended-distance WAN include:

• Protocol stack - Software protocol stacks quickly overload servers

and inhibit SAN performance. Therefore, SANs are usually based

on FCP optimized for storage environments, offering high-speed

and low-overhead communication. Data networks rely on a

protocol stack to provide communication and are often

implemented using TCP/IP over GbE. TCP/IP provides a high

level of protocol processing and is appropriate for data networks.

• Latency - Local storage traffic requires minimal delay and latency.

Distance transmission associated with WANs introduces variable

delays and high latency.

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McDATA Sphereon 4300 Specifications Page 178