
244 SAN Multiprotocol Routing: An Introduction and Implementation
7.4.5 PortChanneling
PortChanneling is the Cisco term for exchange-based load balancing across
multiple ISLs. An exchange is usually a single SCSI command and the response
it evokes, so it is of fairly short duration (milliseconds or seconds). However,
exchanges can be longer in a FICON environment because FICON improves
efficiency by retaining the exchange ID for multiple commands.
PortChanneling can also be implemented based on source ID (that is, a server
HBA port) and destination ID (for example, a disk system HBA port) pairs, which
give less granular load balancing but provid ...