Metadata Network

Regardless of the size of your SAN implementation, you will also need another out-of-band network, which means that although the clients are connected to the rest of the SAN through Fibre Channel connections, the metadata and file access communication travel on a separate Ethernet network. Splitting the connection into two independent networks ensures that no "non-metadata" data packets clog up the Fibre Channel network, giving you the maximum bandwidth for large data files.

Needless to say, both a Fibre Channel switch and an Ethernet switch (1000 Base-T recommended, also known as Gigabit Ethernet) are necessary to configure Xsan. It is also desirable to keep the "chatter" separate from the out-of-band network by connecting clients to the Internet using a secondary Ethernet port. If your computer has only one Ethernet port and you want access to a network outside your SAN, you can place an additional Ethernet PCI card in your client computers.