Latency Generator: SAN Extension Page 1 of 1

SAN Extension
Keeping It All In Sync
Information is the life-blood of business and a Storage Area Networks (SAN) can assure high-availability and
redundancy to keep information flowing.

• Introduce delay of up to several seconds, depending on the line rate

• Generate impairments, including bit errors, frame/packet loss and total signal loss
• Operate at full line rate, regardless of packet size or data rate
• Manage with an intuitive GUI and plug-and-play setup

SAN technologies provide high-bandwidth, low-latency movement of block data from servers to disk arrays
or tape drives. SAN extension connects SANs over wide-area networks for remote data mirroring, backup
and file sharing. The application requires an affordable, high-performance method of interconnecting
multiple SAN islands over distance that will functions within the existing datacom/telecom infrastructure.

SAN extension solutions use a variety of methods to extend Fibre Channel or IP-based SANs over existing
MANs and WANs, including:

• Fibre Channel over ATM/SONET Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCIP, FCoE)FCIP over SONETSCSI over
IP (iSCSI) over Ethernet
• Fibre Channel over SONET (using GFP or a proprietary technologies)

The Anue Fibre Channel WAN Emulator has high bandwidth and
high latency capibilities required for SAN extension testing.

In a mirrored SAN extension environment, the data mirroring process continuously copies data from
primary storage to a remote storage device. With synchronous mirroring, data isn't written to primary
storage until remote storage confirms it has received the mirrored data. This process syncs primary and
secondary storage but also introduces latency because of the checking process. (With asynchronous
mirroring, the primary device does not wait for confirmation, which could result in a data mismatch in the
event of a network failure).

In addition to latency, remote synchronous disk mirroring involves very large volumes of data being
transferred between sites. This means that the MAN or WAN needs to perform to the same level as an in-
building SAN.

Whether you are developing or implementing a SAN extension solution, you must validate that it delivers
the required throughput and maintains data integrity in the presence of significant latency.

http://www.anuesystems.com/Resources_Storage.shtml 2/8/2011