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ISM v5 > Module 6: Storage Area Network - FC SAN (Introduction to SAN + Fibre Channel SAN) > Flashcards

Module 6: Storage Area Network - FC SAN (Introduction to SAN + Fibre Channel SAN) Flashcards

1
Q

What are the benefits of SAN?

A

consolidate storage resources across multiple compute systems

centralizes management + improves utilization

enables connectivity across geographically dispersed locations

enables replication between storage systems

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2
Q

What is FC?

A

high speed network than runs on optical fiber cables and serial attached copper cables

provides high scalability

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3
Q

What are the speeds of FC?

A

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 Gb/s

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4
Q

What is the “fan out” ratio in a FC SAN environment?

A

ratio between a single port on a storage device and total number of servers attached to it

if fan out ratio is high and array becomes overloaded performance suffers

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5
Q

What is the “fan in” ratio in a FC SAN environment?

A

specifies accessiblity of a host port to multiple storage ports on multiple arrays

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6
Q

what are compute and storage systems referred to as in a FC SAN environment?

A

nodes - each node is source or destination of a FC frame

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7
Q

What does each node require in a FC SAN environment?

A

atleast one network adapter for physical communication interface between nodes

EX: HBAs, front end adapters

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8
Q

What are the most common cables used in FC?

A

optical fiber cables

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9
Q

Why would you use copper cables in an FC network?

A

for shorter distances since they provide good signal to noise ratio for distances 30m or less

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10
Q

How do optical cables carry data?

A

in the form of light

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11
Q

What are the two types of optical cables?

A

multimode
single mode

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12
Q

What is a multimode optical cable (MMF)?

A

multiple beams of light transmitted at different angles onto core of cable

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13
Q

What is a con of MMF cables?

A

multiple light beams in the cable tend to collide - weakens signal strength after certain distance - called modal dispersion

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14
Q

What is a single mode fiber cable (SMF)?

A

carries single ray of light that projects at center of core - limits modal dispersion

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15
Q

When do you typically use SMF?

A

long distance cable runs

distance dependent on power of laser and sensitivity of transceiver

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16
Q

What are the characteristics of a FC switch?

A

each node has dedicated communication path

provides fixed port count

active ports can be scaled up non-disruptively

some redundant components

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17
Q

What are the characteristics of a FC director?

A

high end switch w higher port count

has modular architecture

port count scaled up by adding blades or line cards

all components redundant/hot swappable

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18
Q

What are the ports in an FC SAN environment?

A

N Port
E Port
F Port
G Port

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19
Q

What is the N Port in an FC SAN?

A

node port - end point in a fabric - typically compute system port (FC HBA) or storage system port connected to switch

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20
Q

What is the E Port in a FC SAN?

A

port that forms connection between two FC Switches - known as expansion port - E Port connects to another E Port in the fabric ISLs

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21
Q

What is the F Port in a FC SAN?

A

port on a switch that connects to an N Port - also called fabric port

22
Q

What is the G Port in a FC SAN?

A

generic (empty) port on switch that can be E or F port depending on functionality

23
Q

How many layers are in the FC SAN Protocol stack?

A

FC-0 - FC-4

24
Q

What is the FC-0 Layer?

A

physical layer - includes cables and physical paremeters - can be both electrical and optical media

25
Q

What is the FC-1 Layer?

A

encode/decode layer - defines how data is encoded prior to transmission and decoded upon receipt

26
Q

How is data encoded at the transmittor node in FC-1 Layer?

A

8 bit character encoded in 10 bit transmission character

character than transmitted to receiver node

27
Q

What happens once character is transmitted to receiver node in FC SAN?

A

passed to FC-1 Layer which decodes to original 8 bit character

28
Q

What bit length do FC links over 10GBs use?

A

64 bit to 66 bit transmission

29
Q

What are FC Frame Delimiters?

A

identify the start and end of frame and primitive signal that indicates events at transmission port

30
Q

What are three jobs that the FC-1 Layer performs?

A

FC Frame Delimiters
Link Initialization
Error Recovery

31
Q

What is the FC-2 Layer?

A

routing/flow control layer - provides FC addressing structure and data organization

32
Q

What is the FC-3 Layer?

A

common services layer - not implemented

33
Q

What is the FC-4 Layer?

A

mapping interface layer - uppermost layer in stack

34
Q

What is the job of the FC-4 Layer?

A

defines the app interfaces and way Upper Layer Protocols (ULPs - IP, NVMe etc.) are mapped to lower layers

35
Q

What is a FC Frame?

A

fundamental transfer of data on the FC-2 Layer

36
Q

What are the five part of a FC Frame?

A

start of frame (SOF) - 4bytes
frame header
data field
cyclic redundancy check (CRC) - 4 bytes
end of frame (EOF) - 4 bytes

37
Q

What are the SOF and EOF in a FC frame?

A

act as delimiters

38
Q

What is the frame header in a FC frame?

A

24 bytes long and contains addressing information for the frame

39
Q

What is the data field in a FC frame?

A

contains data payload - up to 2112 bytes - most cases its SCSI data

40
Q

What is the CRC in a FC frame?

A

checksum that facilitates error detection for frame content

41
Q

What is a FC Address?

A

used for communication between nodes in a SAN

42
Q

What is the main purpose of a FC Address?

A

to route data through the fabric

43
Q

How big is a FC Address?

A

24 bits - assigned to N Ports during fabric login

44
Q

What is a World Wide Name (WWN)?

A

unique 64 bit identifier - static to N Port on a FC network

similar to MAC address of NIC

45
Q

What types of WWNs are used in a FC SAN?

A

World Wide Node Name (WWNN)
World Wide Port Name (WWPN)

both used to physically identify Nodes and Ports respectively

46
Q

What are the 3 main SAN connection topologies?

A

DAS
FC-AL
FC-SW

47
Q

What is a DAS FC SAN setup?

A

directly connecting host HBA to front end storage port - limited scalability

48
Q

What is a FC-AL SAN setup?

A

fibre channel arbitrated loop

shared bandwidth hub that connect each host HBA to separate hub for redundancy

connects half of storage ports to one hub and the other half to the other hub

49
Q

What are the advantages of FL-AL over DAS?

A

has more ports for scalability

50
Q

What is FC-SW in a FC SAN?

A

fibre channel switched fabric - switching instead of shared hub

51
Q

What is a disadvantage of FL-AL?

A

aging topology since its shared bandwidth

can only have one IO transfer at a time which can cause bottlenecking

has no zoning or security

52
Q

What is zoning in a FC-SW environment?

A

allows us to create isolated/private conversations between ports

can create as many fan in or fan out ratios as you’d like

ISM v5 (32 decks)

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