276 SAN Multiprotocol Routing: An Introduction and Implementation
9.6 Designing for availability
Redundancy can be used to offer some protection against hardware failure and
against disruptive fabric events. The best practice with fabric design is usually to
use dual redundant fabrics, which have traditionally implied redundant hardware.
With the advent of the VSAN, however, the equation is not so straightforward.
The topics that follow briefly discuss some areas to focus on with respect to
ensuring availability.
9.6.1 Fibre Channel router hardware
All members of the Cisco Fibre Channel router/switch family include redundant
hot-swappable power supplies and fans and the ability to restart a failed
supervisor process.
As offered by IBM, the Cisco ...