Brocade Fabric OS Encryption Administrator’s Guide Supporting NetApp Lifetime Key Manager (LKM) and KeySecure Storage Secure Key Manager (SSKM) Environments (Supporting Fabric OS v7.2.0) - Manual (Page 224)

206 Fabric OS Encryption Administrator’s Guide (LKM/SSKM)
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Recommendations for Initiator Fan-Ins
5
Recommendations for Initiator Fan-Ins
For optimal performance at reasonable scaling factors of initiators, targets, and LUNs accessed,
Brocade Encryption Engines (EEs) are designed to support a fan-in ratio of between four and eight
initiator ports to one target port, in terms of the number of distinct initiator ports to a Crypto
Container (i.e., a virtual target port corresponding to the physical target port).
An encryption engine has 6 distinct encryption blocks with 4 ports, each port operating at 4 Gbps.
The architecture of the encryption blocks provides the potential for an aggregate 96 Gbps of full
duplex encryption bandwidth, if the performance license is installed.
Figure 98 shows the
encryption blocks within an encryption engine, and the host initiator to target port fan-ins. Each
encryption engine can host up to 256 distinct targets with a mapping of 1024 initiators accessing
all the targets. This brings the fan-in ratio for each target to be 1:4 initiators.
FIGURE 98 Fan-in ratios with performance license installed
The fan-in ratio for a target can be higher depending on the maximum bandwidth accepted by the
target. If the I/O throughput across all initiator ports accessing the target port is well balanced, it is
recommended that the maximum fan-in ratio be kept to 8 Initiator ports to 1 target port for optimal
performance. Note that this recommendation holds for initiators running at 4 Gbps or less. If a mix
of 8 Gbps and other 4 Gbps or less initiator is used, then the maximum fan-in will depend on the
maximum sustained bandwidth these initiators would be pushing together over the link to the
same target port and across all the target ports hosted on a given encryption engine.
NOTE
If the performance license is not installed, 48 Gbps of full duplex encryption bandwidth is available
on the encryption engine, Each of the six encryption blocks will use two ports instead of four,
reducing the fan-in ratio by a factor of two.