Device Overview

The IBM SAN42B-R7 Extension Switch offers the following software features and capabilities:

  • Multiple logical tunnels with a maximum tunnel bandwidth up to 50Gb/s allow for scalable connectivity between sites. The IBM Storage Networking SAN42B-R7 supports connectivity to the Brocade SX6 Extension blade and the IBM Storage Networking SAN18B-6. The IBM Storage Networking SAN42B-R7 does not support tunnel connectivity with any other products including the SAN06B-R, SAN42B-R, and Brocade FX8-24.
  • Extension Trunking allows multiple IP source and destination address pairs (defined as circuits) through multiple 1GbE, 10GbE, 25GbE, and 100GbE interfaces to provide high bandwidth tunnel and lossless failover resiliency. Each FCIP circuit supports four QoS classes (Class-F, High, Medium, and Low Priority), each as a TCP connection. When enabled for IP Extension, the tunnel supports up to seven QoS queues (Class-F, FC-High, FC-Medium, FC-Low, IP-High, IP-Medium, and IP-Low).
  • Adaptive Rate Limiting (ARL) provides a minimum bandwidth guarantee for each tunnel while making the full utilization of the available network bandwidth without adverse throughput performance impact at high traffic load. ARL also ensures that the IBM Storage Networking SAN42B-R7 can be a good citizen on shared WAN connections, preserving prescribed bandwidth for other workloads when they are active.
  • Hardware-based compression delivers the ability to maximize throughput over lower bandwidth links in the wide area network, optimizing the cost efficiencies of FCIP. The SAN42B-R7 compresses FC frames before they are encapsulated into FCIP packets. The IP Extension traffic cannot be compressed using hardware-based compression. Only FC traffic over a tunnel can be compressed using hardware-based compression.
  • Key protocol features are enabled in the implementation to optimize performance of Extension over IP networks, including WAN Optimized TCP (WO-TCP), 9K jumbo frame, and end-to-end Path MTU auto discovery.
  • Hardware-based IPsec supports a mix of secure and non-secure tunnels on the same Ethernet port, jumbo frames, and VLAN tagged connections. The SAN42B-R7 IPsec function is capable of supporting both IPv4 and IPv6.
  • FastWrite, Open Systems Tape Pipelining, and Advanced Accelerator for FICON (included with the mainframe SKU) mitigate the latency effect of a long distance FCIP distance connection over IP WAN.
  • eHCL (Extension Hot Code Load) provides In-service firmware upgrade for supporting 24/7 non-stop business operations.
  • Built-in WAN link tester generates traffic over an IP connection to test for maximum throughput, congestion, loss percentage, out of order deliver, latency, and other network conditions. The built-in WAN link tester helps determine the health of a WAN link before deploying it for use.
  • Fabric Vision advanced monitoring provides the following functions:
    • Policy-based monitoring monitors Extension connectivity and WAN anomalies using multi-layer metrics.
    • Flow monitoring reports IOPS and data rate of individual I/O flows of inter-DC replication and tape backup operations.
    • Flow generator generates FC frames for a defined flow with default or custom size and pattern and sent across an Extension tunnel to help validate end-to-end network setup and configuration.
  • Brocade Fabric OS delivers distributed intelligence throughout the network and enables a wide range of value-added applications.