Ive heard that I can use dual loops in Fibre Channel for redundancy, how does this work?
The only way to provide full redundancy in Fibre Channel systems is achieved by cabling two fully independent, redundant loops. Two servers, each with a host adapter, two hubs or switches, and two separate drive arrays would be required. In addition, fail-over software is needed to detect when one path goes down and trigger the switchover event. This cabling scheme provides two independent paths for data with fully redundant hardware. There are other ways to reduce downtime. Two Host Adapters in one server, each connected to separate hubs or switches, going to a dual loop storage array will offer some level of failover. With two host adapters in the same server, all of the connected storage will be detected twice. Fail-over software is again required to distinguish between the primary and secondary drive, detect when one path goes down and trigger the switchover event. The problem here is that there is still only one server. If that fails, the system is down. The other issue is with a
