A switch is a device that channels incoming data from any of multiple input ports to the specific output port that will take the data toward its intended destination. Standard switches simply pass data through to a designated location without manipulating it, and are not designed to handle complex storage, security and performance issues. As a result intelligent switches are used. An intelligent switch is a high-level storage area network routing switch that provides features such as storage virtualization, quality of service (QoS), remote mirroring, data sharing, protocol conversion, and advanced security. Intelligent switch helps to manipulate the data. Intelligent switches, as the name implies, offer more functionality than the current generation of switches that provide connectivity between servers and storage arrays. This additional functionality enables the intelligent switches to support a multitude of applications.
An intelligent switch differs from a traditional switch in that it supports specialized blades that run application functions including protocol conversion, remote mirroring, tape emulation and NAS file and data sharing. There are a couple of different architectures ranging from tightly integrated, with extra processing power at each port and large amounts of bandwidth between blades, to relatively simple, where a blade is equipped with a general purpose processor, memory, and I/O functions to communicate with the switch ports.
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