Dynamic load balancing of fibre channel traffic

Abstract

Systems and methods herein provide for load balancing Fiber Channel traffic. A Fiber Channel load balancer monitors Fiber Channel paths coupled to a host bus adapter and determines the speeds of the Fiber Channel ports within the Fiber Channel paths.

How it works

Determines Fibre Channel traffic sizes of pending requests and, based in part on the traffic sizes and normalized speeds of the Fibre Channel ports, adaptively routes pending traffic across the Fibre Channel ports. This dynamic approach prevents hot-spotting on individual ports and maximizes aggregate throughput across the fabric — particularly valuable as port speeds varied across generations of FC hardware.