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Switch selection for iSCSI

 
rae123456789
Occasional Contributor

Switch selection for iSCSI

Please forgive the relatively non-technical nature of the question. I assure I'm not being lazy; but I cannot find this information in detail and suspect some if it may not be readily published

 

I need to purchase a 24-port, gigabit switch specifically for iScsi traffic. 

 

I've established the following requirements:

 

Must be full line rate across all ports (non-blocking) 

Flow control (pausing) - I think almost all switches satisfy this

Buffer space - I've been advised to ensure I have 512kb PER port

The ability to DISABLE unicast storm control

 

I do not require:

 

Uplinks - we will buy two identical switches to form a redundant fabric, but each will operate in complete isolation

10Gb Ethernet, nor higher. We are satisfied that Gigabit networking will do the job for us

Advanced management beyond the requirements above (e.g. VLAN, STP, etc. etc.)

 

--

It does seem to me that to satisfy the throughput and buffer space requirements, we may need to buy a managed switch anyway, because you only get full-line rate when you go for the slightly higher-spec models.

 

With that said, based on these requirements, can anybody advise of the most suitable procurve model? At the moment I'm pondering the 5130 EI but I'm not sure if it meets the last two requirements.

 

Additionally, if anyone has had any great iScSI success stories with a particular 1Gb switch, I'd be interested to hear about it.

 

thanks

 

Robert