SAN requirements and considerations

These requirements and considerations can help you plan for a DS6000™ series that attaches to a SAN.

A fibre-channel storage area network (SAN) is a specialized, high-speed network that attaches servers and storage devices. With a SAN, you can perform an any-to-any connection across the network using interconnect elements such as routers, gateways, hubs, and switches.

When you connect your DS6000 storage units to a SAN, you must meet the following requirements:

Fibre-channel I/O adapters must be configured to operate in a point-to-point mode fabric topology. See the IBM System Storage™ DS6000 Host Systems Attachment Guide for more information.

Also keep the following considerations in mind:

Fibre-channel SANs can provide the capability to interconnect open systems and storage in the same network as S/390 and zSeries host systems and storage.
A single fibre-channel I/O adapter can have physical access to multiple fibre-channel ports on the storage unit.