Can fibre channel be load balanced?

Hello

I am currently running a dual port QLogic QLE2462 in my DSS server.
This is connected point-to-point to 2 clients each with a QLogic QLE2460 adapter.

It's working very well, but I want to increase the number of clients connecting.

For that I'll need a switch. I'm looking at the QLogic SANbox 5600 switch.

Question is, if I plug in both ports on the DSS server into the switch, can I "load balance" the traffic for 4 clients? Or will all traffic simply go through 1 port on the target, therefore giving me only 400MB/sec of bandwidth?

I'm doing this with iSCSI over Intel gigabit adapters. I'm load balancing iSCSI traffic through a quad port Intel adapter and it's working very well.

However I've no experience with fibre channel switches and I'm not sure if this load balancing is done at the switch (through the management interface) or if it is done at the target, i.e. the Open-E server. I've gone through various PDF documents from QLogic's web site and I can't find what I'm looking for.

Has anyone done this?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by linux-storage

Question is, if I plug in both ports on the DSS server into the switch, can I "load balance" the traffic for 4 clients? Or will all traffic simply go through 1 port on the target, therefore giving me only 400MB/sec of bandwidth?

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Hi linux-storage,

adressing on the FC SAN is done by port address - since you have two ports available, you can administratively balance the load by using alternating target port WWNs at the initiators.

I know of no channel bundling feature available for FC connections.

Regards,
Jens