Fabric OS Encryption Administrator's Guide

Fabric OS Encryption Administrator’s Guide 203

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Recommendations for Initiator Fan-Ins

An encryption engine has 6 distinct encryption blocks with 4 ports each port operating at 4Gbps.

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 108 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 108 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,

then 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

of 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.