Fibre Channel Customers Must Consider FCoE Options

Since its introduction more than two decades ago, Fibre Channel has become a popular option for connecting servers and storage systems in large data centers that need peak performance. With data volumes increasing, vendors have been working on a faster version -- 8-Gbps Fibre Channel -- of the popular connectivity option. As Fibre Channel customers examine these new products, they may need to take a step back and determine how much longer they want to stay with this option or begin making plans to migrate to an alternative.

Not surprisingly, large companies with high-end data storage requirements are the first group of customers moving to 8-Gbps Fibre Channel. Corporations are funneling more information into their virtualized servers. As a result, a growing volume of data is moving between them and their storage-area networks (SANs). "The introduction of technologies such as virtualization has meant that corporate networks are becoming stressed at certain places," says Erik Pounds, product marketing manager at Brocade.

The faster version of Fibre Channel offers twice as much throughput as the previous high mark, so companies have been turning to it. When examining different vendors' products, they should be aware that the new high-speed option comes with a few possible deployment challenges. One concern may be Fibre Channel's high price. Even simple items, such as host bus adapters, can cost a few thousand dollars, and the cost of larger switches and storage arrays is typically in the six figure range.

Compounding the issue is that Fibre Channel requires an end-to-end connection in order for companies to realize the extra speed. If one of the items is missing (say a server) 8-Gbps support, then the network automatically downgrades to 4-Gbps speed. Because multiple components are involved in upgrading from 4-Gbps to 8-Gbps, deployments typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and can often shoot past the $1 million mark. Vendors such as Cisco, EMC, Emulex and Qlogic offer a variety of 8-Gbps Fibre Channel products.

The availability of the needed elements is scattershot at the moment for a couple of reasons. Work on the high speed upgrade began in 2005 and products started to make their way from vendor labs to customer sites last year. Like previous efforts, the 8-Gbps work was technically challenging, but this time vendors' attention was diverted.

Ethernet, which had a limited presence in the storage arena, suddenly emerged as a stronger option for data center storage networks. The Fibre Channel Industry Association, which has been driving Fibre Channel's future, helped drive development of the Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard using 10-Gbps Ethernet. A key reason for this is changing data center designs.

Many companies find themselves with hundreds or thousands of servers and a hodgepodge of storage systems. New unified computing platforms are emerging that support server, storage, and networking functions. Rather than purchase separate connectivity devices and cabling for each type of device, companies can collapse all of these functions into one multi-purpose box and run their data and storage traffic over a single network. Simpler management is another plus with this approach -- corporations in theory can operate one management system and control all of their devices rather than running a number of different applications.

Ethernet has emerged as stiff competition as this transformation starts to take hold. "There is a tremendous amount of interest in Fiber Channel over Ethernet at the moment," says Bob Laliberte, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. Ethernet already dominates the desktop and has become a key player in wide-area networks. Meanwhile, Fibre Channel has garnered little acceptance outside of the SAN.

Vendors as well as corporations have been trying to determine what impact the development of FCoE may have on conventional Fibre Channel sales. It seems like some vendors diverted funding from their Fibre Channel products to FCoE development. As a result, corporations are finding support for some of the necessary components is missing as they try to deploy end-to-end 8G Fiber Channel connections.

In addition, Fibre Channel is used for some of the largest and most important applications run by enterprises. Consequently, they will need to be sure that there is a simple migration path from Fiber Channel to FCoE. Currently, FCoE products are still more in the development than the production phase, so how clean the transition will be is unclear.

Also, firms will have to grapple with personnel issues if they decide to move to FCoE. Fibre Channel technicians have been hard to find and are expensive. How readily these individuals will embrace Ethernet as a company's prime storage networking option and how easily they can be integrated into a unified computing platform data center are open questions.

In the short term, 8G Fibre Channel offers companies a way to add needed bandwidth to overtaxed connections. Longer term, it seems likely that many companies will move away from this communication option to FCoE. As a result, companies need to find a balance between conflicting short term and long term objectives.