The long awaited switch interoperability standard, now ratified and published by the ANSI T11 Fibre Channel standards committee, allowing Fibre Channel (FC) switches from multiple vendors to co-exist in the same heterogeneous Storage Area Network (SAN), is finally here! The focus of this paper is to examine the state of switch interoperability, what’s available today and what’s not yet implemented. It provides guidelines on what end users should expect when implementing a SAN with switches from more than one vendor. It also examines some of the reasons why an organization would want to implement a SAN with switches from multiple vendors. QLogic bases this paper on its extensive work and involvement in the evolution and ratification of the interoperability standards, as well as first-hand experience in implementing multi-vendor SANs.
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