Performance evaluation of survivable WDM based SANs in a metro ring network

Storage area networks (SANs) are an essential part of enterprise computing today. There is no comprehensive business continuity plan without SANs in the picture. This paper proposes and evaluates network survivability of optical paths in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) based storage area networks in a metro ring network. The paper begins with a background on network survivability in metro WDM ring network. Subsequently, the network and node architectures along with their medium access control (MAC) protocols are described. In this work, one link failure (a single cable cut) in metro WDM based SANs in a ring network architecture is considered. Performance evaluation for network survivability in metro WDM SAN is carried out by means of discrete-event computer simulation. Network throughput and packet delay are investigated. The network performance is evaluated for asymmetric (unbalanced) traffic scenarios under Poisson and self-similar traffic.