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Fibre-Channel
is an interface standard for connecting computers to mass storage devices
such as disk drives,
disk arrays and
tape libraries. Developed
more than a decade after SCSI,
which it was intended to replace for high performance applications, the
Fibre-Channel standard was specified around faster data throughput speeds, and
longer distances because of its use of fiber-optic cable.
Data reliability
was also significantly better than parallel SCSI because data errors due to
crosstalk and line reflections were effectively designed out.
The
differences in spelling (Fibre in this standard versus Fiber in
the cable) were done deliberately by the standard creators.
In recent
years, new versions of SCSI, such as
iSCSI have nearly caught
up in speed terms (and iSCSI over
InfiniBand is even
faster) so the original performance differences are now blurred. ...from
Megabyte's Storage
Dictionary |
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Megabyte
found that Fibre-channel
was a really quick way of getting around. | |
FCIA Reports on 2nd FCoE
Plugfest
Editor:- May 20, 2009 - the Fibre Channel Industry
Association today
announced that
it successfully completed its 2nd FCoE Plugfest the week of May 12th at the
University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab.
"This year's FCoE Plugfest was timed appropriately given tough
economic times we are facing today – IT decision-makers are looking for
savings in numerous areas such as power, space and cooling management while
preserving their existing Fibre Channel investments" says Skip Jones,
chairman FCIA and director Technology and Planning at
QLogic. "Last week’s
FCoE Plugfest proved that this new technology is ready for prime time and ready
to deliver the cost-savings that customers are looking for and underscores the
arrival of a new efficient data center."
Storage Events,
Storage ORGs
Emulex says "No" to a future "Connecting everything®"
Editor:- May 4, 2009 - Emulex announced today
it has
rejected
an unsolicited acquisition offer from Broadcom.
...Later:-
May 5, 2009 - Broadcom
extended
the deadline for their offer and published a press release saying what a
great deal it would be for shareholders. "Broadcom's all-cash offer is not
subject to a financing condition. Broadcom intends to fund the offer with its
existing cash holdings."
Emulex, in its rejection letter, had
pointed to the potential value in recent design wins. Broadcom rubbished this
assertion with this pithy analysis.
"... while Emulex has touted
its "design wins" in its response to Broadcom and in other
communications with the financial community, it has failed to demonstrate an
ability to convert design wins into either revenue growth or market share.
Over the last several years, including this most recent quarter, Emulex has
continued to lose share to its larger competitor (QLogic)."
Editor's
comments:- the FC,
10GbE and
InfiniBand adapter
markets used to be pivotal enabling tools for fast
SANs in the enterprise
server computing market. However, in recent times these network technologies
have become commodities - and their prospects
have waned..
As I've said before, the future of fast storage interconnects will be dominated
by the requirements of the SSD
market instead of the HDD
market. Redeploying the intellectual property of these storage connections
into closer proximity with solid state storage is something which the
traditional HBA business model cannot achieve - or which takes too long.
Broadcom's
mission statement "Connecting everything®" is more in line with
the future vision of the computer market than the old-style duopoly of Emulex
(and QLogic) which dominate a market that's going to become irrelevant.
New Module Aims at "must-have 100 terabytes SSD"
Users
Editor:- April 21, 2009 - Texas Memory Systems
announced the RamSan-620
- a 2U rackmount SLC Flash SSD with 2TB ($88,000 list price) to 5TB
capacity and 2 to 8
FC or
InfiniBand ports.
Throughput is 3GB/s. R/W latency is 250µS and 80µS respectively.
Transactional performance is 250,000 random IOPS. Power consumption is 325W.
Multiple RamSan-620s can scale to higher capacities. Upto 100TB can fit in a
single 40U rack.
"The IT community is looking for ways to increase
storage efficiency while boosting productivity," said Greg Schulz, founding
analyst at StorageIO
and author of "The Green and
Virtual Data Center".. "It is time to stop moving around I/O or
other bottlenecks and start enabling storage efficiency via performance
optimised storage that does more work, in a smaller footprint (power, cooling,
floor-space, economic) while boosting productivity. Anyone can attach
flash SSD to a
computer or storage system; however the real trick and business benefit is when
a storage system or applications server can fully utilise the technology without
introduction of, or moving I/O and performance bottlenecks elsewhere. The
RamSan-620 is an example of a new breed of storage solutions that have been
optimised to leverage the capabilities of flash SSD while preserving application
QoS and service level objectives."
Editor's comments:-
there has been a lot of debate in the
fastest lanes of
the SSD accelerator market about whether it's better for users to deploy this
technology inside the server box (as
PCIe cards) - or
outside the box (on the SAN).
This is reminiscent of the old
CISC
vs RISC processor debates of the mid 1980s.
Entertaining as it is
to analyze these polarized approaches I explained in my
2009 - Year of SSD
Market Confusion and
rackmount SSD
articles why I believe that users will, in fact, do both.
Texas Memory
Systems has in the past told me, that whenever they launch a new rackmount SSD
they have some customers who just fill up a complete cabinet with the new model
and use that as their basic unit of solid state storage until the next new
model comes around. They'll only need 6.5kW for the 100TB SSD enabled by
this model - and they'll get the transactional performance of 10,000
hard drives.
New Real-Time Design / Debug Tool for FC / NAS OEMs
Editor:-
March 25, 2009 - Absolute Analysis
has
announced
enhancements to its range of
serial data test tools
- such as...
- ability to check system behavior in the presence of latency (failure and
recovery) for Fibre Channel and Ethernet protocols, including
FCoE,
AFDX,
iSCSI, IP, IPv6, TCP
- ability to corrupt one or more network events in real-time and simulate
data loss, data corruption, protocol errors and data errors, and check device
under test error recovery procedures.
"Absolute Analysis is proud to offer engineers a much-needed
single solution featuring the integration of sophisticated tools for use in data
communications, telecommunications, and military communications, to capture,
analyze, delay, modify, and verify data at full line rate," stated Dennis
Murphy, President of Absolute Analysis. "This release... enables
in-line, real-time impairment testing coupled with a powerful error injector and
analysis that far exceed existing industry offerings." Storage Testers & Analyzers
Virtual Instruments Offers Clearer Views for SAN Traffic Analysis
Scotts
Valley, Calif. - November 11, 2008 - Virtual Instruments today
announced availability of its SAN Traffic Analysis Point module.
An
add-on component for its NetWisdom solution, TAP (which costs $300 per
port) enables real-time Fibre
Channel network transaction monitoring, analysis and diagnosis. Unlike
Mirror or SPAN ports, TAP devices show complete visibility of network traffic
and mirror the data flowing between two network points.
Virtual
Instruments' CEO, Mark Urdahl said - "IT administrators can find
themselves in serious and expensive situations when the storage network
experiences a problem or down time with limited visibility into the root-cause
of the problem. Having Virtual Instruments' TAP device is like having a window
into your SAN traffic. It
provides unprecedented access to SAN transactions so that performance and
troubleshooting issues can be proactively identified and resolved, allowing our
customers to realize tremendous cost savings."
...Virtual
Instruments profile, Storage
Testers & Analyzers
New Article - FC SAN SSDs
Editor:- September 13, 2008 -
Storagesearch.com today published a new article and directory on the
subject of - "Fibre-Channel SSDs."
"I've tracked
the SAN storage market
since the first commercially launched products in
1994" said editor
Zsolt Kerekes.
"As the number of market-active
SSD oems listed on
Storagesearch approaches 90
companies I thought I should make it easier for readers to disentagle the info
related to this important market segment - which was getting lost in tables
deep in our SSD
Buyers Guide. The new SAN SSD page lists all current vendors and also
explains how this market fits into a historic context." ...read the article |
|
| ATTO Ships
First Quad-Channel 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBA |
Amherst, NY -
September 10, 2008 -
ATTO Technology, Inc. announced the release of the industry's first
quad 8Gbps Fibre Channel PCIe HBA.
With aggregate speeds of up
to 3,200 MB/sec. for reads or writes, the
FC-84EN is designed
for intensive data applications, including 2K and 4K film editing, tape
streaming and backup, rich content delivery, and complex database environments.
Driver support includes Windows, Linux and Mac OS X . ...ATTO profile
InServ Selects Emulex Embedded FC-to-SATA Bridge
COSTA MESA, Calif. -
September 2, 2008 - Emulex Corp today announced that its BR-2401
embedded storage bridge has been selected for use within 3PAR's InServ
storage servers.
Emulex's
FC-to-SATA
bridge solution enables high-capacity
SATA
hard disk drives to be
integrated into the back-end of 3PAR's InServ arrays. With this integration,
3PAR customers can take advantage of both low-cost, high-capacity SATA along
with Fibre Channel disk
capacity within the same drive chassis. ...3PAR profile,
...Emulex profile,
storage routers
QLogic's Fibre Channel Adapters are Virtually as Fast
ALISO
VIEJO, Calif - June 26, 2008 - QLogic Corp. and Microsoft
today announced near-native transaction performance in a virtualized SAN
environment.
The companies tested
SAN attached, Windows
Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines and achieved I/O performance that closely
matches the 200,000 IOs per second performance native with QLogic 8Gb adapters
and Windows Server 2008. ...QLogic
profile, Fibre-channel
adapters
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| Multiple
Vendors Announce Support for FCoE |
Editor:- April 11, 2008 - this
week Emulex
and Intel
launched 10Gb/s Fibre
Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) adapters.
Emulex explained the
thinking behind this. With FCoE, customers may now leverage the ubiquity of
Ethernet to converge both storage and networking traffic, improve overall
efficiency and simplify the infrastructure. Designed to natively transport Fibre
Channel traffic over the Ethernet network, FCoE will take advantage of lossless
Ethernet in the data center. A lossless Ethernet fabric provides the level of
performance and reliable delivery of data required for enterprise storage
environments.
Intel's PCIe dual port FCoE adapter will be in volume production in
May and will be priced at $799. The entire Intel 10GbE family will have FCoE
support on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by July and on Windows later this year.
FCoE will be a new standard with support from leading storage and
switch oems. The first mention on these news pages was in
October 2007 -
when QLogic unveiled its products.
In theory FCoE may help customers
with an installed base of legacy FC applications reduce costs by moving them
onto Ethernet environments. In practise, as we saw with the long drawn out
birth pangs of the iSCSI
market - tidying up all the loose ends could take many years. |
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storage history
Fibre-channel
- 1999
Fibre-channel
- 2000
Fibre-channel
- 2001
Fibre-channel
- 2002
Fibre-channel
- 2003
Fibre-channel
- 2004
Fibre-channel
- 2005
Fibre-channel
- 2006 | |
