The Fabric Layer
The heart of a SAN are Fibre Channel switches that provide any-to-any connectivity for servers and storage devices. Switch product lines range from entry- to enterprise-level to meet a wide range of changing business requirements. Two or more interconnected switches create a SAN fabric. Fabrics allow you to optimize your SAN for performance, scalability, and availability. Some switches include a high-value fabric operating system that provides intelligence, enabling advanced SAN fabric management, monitoring, and security. The tests associated with the Fabric layer report the health of the fabric switch (see Figure 1.
