Fibre Channel switches are not required for direct-attach configurations. Connecting one or more PowerVault 224F storage expansion enclosures to the PowerVault 660F increases the storage capacity in direct-attach configurations. Fibre Channel switches are the beginning point for PowerVault SANs. For all PowerEdge Cluster configurations using PowerVault Fibre Channel storage, Dell supports dual, active switch fabrics. These switches can also be connected together, or cascaded, to provide a higher number of available ports.
Dual fabrics are separate storage networks between the servers and the storage enclosures.
Dual fabrics enable throughput from the server to the storage to effectively double while also protecting the system against component failures. Dell provides extensive documentation on these procedures for both stand-alone servers and MSCS cluster nodes. In the storage environment, consolidation relates to multiple servers using resources within a single enclosure. Each storage enclosure supports stand-alone nodes and cluster pairs. The cluster pairs should be running the same operating system on both nodes, but Windows NT 4.0, Enterprise Edition and Windows 2000 Advanced Server clusters can coexist in the same SAN, and even share the same storage enclosure.