| 摘要 |
A storage switch 304 in accordance with an embodiment of the invention is a highly scalable switch that allows the creation of a SAN 402 that is easy to deploy and that can be centrally managed. Moreover, such a storage switch 304 also allows the deployment of a global infrastructure, allowing the resources of the SAN, such as storage devices 116, to essentially be positioned anywhere on the globe. Further, such a storage switch allows a multi-protocol SAN, e.g., one that includes both iSCSI or Fibre Channel 204, and processes data packets at "wire speed." To further enable wire-speed processing, a switch 112 in accordance with the invention has "intelligence" distributed to each of its linecards, through which it classifies packets into data and control packets, it performs virtualization functions, and it performs protocol translation functions. A switch 112 in accordance with the invention further performs serverless storage services such as mirroring, snapshot, and replication. |
