Switches have emerged as a crucial element in any SAN infrastructure, interconnecting and managing traffic between the various storage systems and server elements on the SAN —sometimes supporting hundreds of ports on a single switch.

But switches have evolved to be far more than just network "traffic cops." Today, many SAN switches provide powerful features that can help administrators organize and manage the storage network, including storage virtualization, provisioning/zoning, inter-switch link (ISL) trunking, performance planning and security features like authentication.

In this chapter of the SAN SearchStorage All-in -One Guide, you'll learn about the characteristics for some of the most popular switch classes — blade, director and intelligent.