Storage area networks extension scenarios in a wide area WDM mesh architecture under heterogeneous traffic

In this paper, two storage area networks (SANs) extension scenarios are proposed in a wide area wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) mesh architecture. While in the first scenario storage resources are assumed to be located in two nodes serving as primary and secondary SANs, storage resources are assumed to be distributed over a number of nodes serving as primary and secondary SANs in the second scenario. SAN traffic is assumed to co-exist with IP and/or 10GE traffic to achieve economy of scale. A hybrid optical switching (HOS) technique is considered. OCS is used for IP/10GE traffic transmission and OBS is used for SAN traffic transmission. Simulation is carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed scenarios using accurate traffic sources.