Fibre channel storage area network design for an acoustic camera system with 1.6 Gbits/s bandwidth

Driven by Gigabit-rate fibre channel (FC) networking capability, storage area networks (SAN) have emerged as a high performance interface that can interconnect multiple servers and storage devices with high bandwidth, high availability and high fault tolerance. Most FC SAN designs employ fabric switches to retime and manage traffic. This is a relatively expensive approach but provides the robustness demanded by workstation network users. We present the application of FC-AL (arbitrated loop)-based SAN technology to a novel problem of constructing a data management system for a broadband acoustic camera demanding 1.6 Gbit/s data flow rate. The needs of such a dedicated SAN system are quite different from that of a generic computing network. Our SAN consists of Intel embedded processors running Windows NT4.0 and Seagate FC hard drives. In order to improve the end user throughput, the mechanisms of FC I/O systems are examined and major factors affecting FC-AL performance have been analysed. Furthermore, we have observed the application performance of FC-AL systems employing different types of host bus adapters (HBA) and CPUs. Finally, test results are presented and evaluated.