9.0 Using Fibre Channel to Deploy iFolder in a Storage Area Network

Many organizations are providing round-the-clock operations and high-availability services to their users. Integration with Novell Cluster Services helps these organizations to deploy iFolder behind cluster-enabled servers either through a Fibre Channel SAN (storage area network) or through iSCSI.

Figure 9-1 Deployment using SAN and FC

If a SAN can meet your organization requirements, you can use Fibre Channel to deploy iFolder in a SAN environment. This setup provides very good response (high performance low-latency data transfers) for data requests (I/O) for iFolder users. If your deployment needs heavy data transfer between users and the servers, you can also use the SAN with a Fibre Channel setup.

Organizations involved in multi-media invest in SANs for storage scalability and high- performance data transfer rates. Implementing iFolder in this scenario enables users to transfer data to and from different users in a fast and reliable manner. Because iFolder performs a delta synchronization of data, the data transfer is minimized and performance is increased. The users do not need to use file system protocols (CIFS/AFP/NFS) to access or share files.

The following sections describe the deployment in SAN environment through Fibre Channel.