Designing fibre channel fabrics

The fibre channel standard, developed by the ANSI X3T9.3 task group, defines a serial I/O channel for interconnecting a number of peripheral devices and computer systems. In this paper we consider how fibre channel switches can be cascaded to form a fibre channel fabric. We begin with an analytical model of topology performance that provides a theoretical upper bound on fabric performance and a method for the practical evaluation of fabric topologies. Next, we present simulation results for a single fibre channel switch having 16 ports and a specific high-level architecture. Finally, we consider cascades of this switch, and discuss some subtleties, such as different routing strategies, deadlocks and unfairness.