Fibre Channel: Continuous Innovation
Overview
Fibre Channel (FC) has been the major storage system interconnect since the mid 1990s and is the data center standard for storage area networks (SANs) and enterprise storage, with more than 80% market share today and projected through 2010, according to Gartner External Controller-Based Disk Storage WW 2006–2010, October 6, 2006. FC SANs offer a range of benefits such as improved backup and restore, enhanced business continuance, and simplified consolidation. This article addresses of some of the common concerns about Fibre Channel and discusses some of the recent developments.
Fibre Channel: Debunking Concerns
IFibre Channel is a mature interface, interoperability is well understood, and management is becoming more standardized. FC has been designed to scale from simple to the most complex topologies, and the FC Simple Configuration and Management (FC-SCM) initiative will help to streamline and cost-optimize system configurations and simplify installation and interoperability for smaller FC SANs.
Figure 1: FCIA Fibre Channel Speed Roadmap, Base2
Although FC is sometimes considered expensive, it offers very strong price/performance, and bandwidth options with 4Gb offer increased performance with no increase in price versus 2Gb. In 2008, HBAs, switches, and storage systems are expected to support 8Gb in the data center and replication between data centers with low latency. As with other FC link-speed transitions, 8Gb (Figure 1) will deliver backward compatibility and automatic speed negotiation to 4Gb and 2Gb.
FC is not just for large companies and enterprise data centers, but for companies and data centers of all sizes that need or have performance and tiered storage requirements and mission-critical data that cannot afford business downtime. FC is designed to allow incremental growth so that both the costs and the risks can be absorbed gradually, without exposing the user’s business to excessive risk. FC guarantees at least two generations of forward and backward compatibility, future-proofing storage and providing the best backward and forward compatibility of any data transport. FC is also very secure.
Fibre Channel Recent and Emerging Innovations
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), an emerging specification proposed in April 2007, is an example of continued innovation. FCoE will enhance investments in FC-based architectures and business solutions. FCoE expands Fibre Channel into the Ethernet environment, combining two leading technologies—FC and Ethernet—to provide more options to end users for SAN connectivity and networking. FCoE is expected to deliver leading performance without the latency and complexity issues of TCP, to provide greater flexibility in network infrastructure and protocol decisions through network convergence, and to enhance FC investments in the data center.
Other innovations such as SATA Tunneling over FC (FC-SATA), ratified in April 2007; Inter-Fabric Routing (IFR); N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV); and Fabric Application Interface Specificaion (FAIS) will improve interoperability and reduce costs. All will support product within 12 months.
FC-SATA maps the Serial ATA storage interface protocol to FC. This enables SATA drives to be connected directly to FC infrastructures without the need for bridges that convert between the FC and SATA protocols. Inter-Fabric Routing is for heterogeneous fabric routing and improves scalability and interoperability. N-Port ID Virtualization makes the port ID autonomous from the server, improving the sharing of HBAs, and Fabric Application Interface Specification will speed up the deployment of storage applications in the fabric.
Summary
For nearly a decade, FC has been the mainstay for companies looking to increase storage resiliency and bandwidth performance while maintaining backward compatibility. FC is evolving to continue to be the standard for storage networking, from enhancing server and storage infrastructure consolidation to delivering the highest levels of performance and data reliability.
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