Five Issues When Making a Fibre Channel Purchase

Fibre Channel products based on the faster 8-Gbps standard have been slowly making their way into the marketplace. While other networking technologies experienced a downturn recently, Fibre Channel has seen revenue increases, largely due to the delivery of the new higher speed option. As companies deploy new technologies, they often grapple with various issues. In recognition of that, here are five items to think about as your company examines this emerging communication option.

Virtualization Drives Fibre Channel Growth

Virtualization has become popular in companies of all sizes -- small, medium and large. Rather than add server after server to a data center, virtualization enables a company to "chop up" one of its system into a number of virtual autonomous devices. The key benefit is a company does not have to buy and manage as many physical devices.

However, the popularity of this technology has had a ripple effect in the storage market. Companies want to push larger volumes of information over their storage system links and need faster connections. As a result, 8-Gbps FC products represent a fast growing segment in the storage networking marketplace.

Bottlenecks Limit True Throughput

Faster speeds and more connections have been an area of emphasis among Fibre Channel product suppliers. In some cases, vendors tout devices capable of supporting hundreds of 8-Gbps connections, but such claims may ring hollow.

Congestion problems can occur in a couple of places. First, a storage device may not be able to hand information off to a switch that quickly because of internal I/O bottlenecks. Second, the various connections are funneled into a switch's backplane, basically, the main communications avenue among all of its different components. In some cases, a backplane's speed is much less than of that of all the full ports. So, potential customers need to dig a bit to determine true system throughput versus advertised speeds.

Ecosystem Still Under Development

Fibre Channel deployments depend on a variety of products: servers, switches, storage systems, as well as associated software. So taking advantage of the higher speeds does not mean simply upgrading one element; companies usually need to change a variety of products. At this stage, enterprises will find that some of the pieces are available, but others are still in development.

Brocade was the first switch vendor to jump on the Fibre Channel bandwagon, and Cisco has been on its heels. "Virtually all storage suppliers have added Fibre Channel support to their product lines," says Bob Laliberte, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group.

Software, such as backup packages and management systems, represent the final element. Availability of such products is a bit scattershot at the moment. Consequently, customers need to understand that they can deploy 8-Gbps connections but may give up some of the management features and control found with more mature, lower speed options of the technology.

Will Fibre Channel Fit into Future Data Centers?

Data center designs are about to undergo dramatic changes. Companies are looking for ways to consolidate equipment and lower their operating costs. "Pressures in the data center will increasingly drive users to unified fabric connectivity in the next two years," predicts Jeff Boles, senior analyst at Taneja Group. These fabrics are capable of supporting switches, servers and storage systems. Theoretically, collapsing autonomous networks should lead to lower product pricing as well as decreases in power utilization, cooling system requirements, and space.

How well Fibre Channel will fit in this new design is an open question. While it has been popular with SANs, the communications option has not gained much attention in other market segments. As a result, it could be displaced by technologies, such as Ethernet, which have demonstrated that they can garner acceptance in many different markets. One unified approach -- Fibre Channel over Ethernet -- is being push by many vendors as a way to take two well-known and familiar technologies and merge them into a single unified fabric, and many vendors have announced plans for FCoE products.

16-Gbps Fibre Channel Deployments Appears Far Out

One reason for Fibre Channel's ongoing popularity has been the clear migration path that vendors have mapped out for it. The technology has been doubling its top speed, starting at 1 Gbps in the middle 1990s and making its way to 8 Gbps now.

Next on the docket is a move to 16-Gbps Fibre Channel. However, work is in this area is in an early stage. There has been some discussion about what the standard will entail, and few component suppliers have started to deliver products. However, the Technical Committee T11, which is the committee within the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) and responsible for Fibre Channel specifications, has not set a definitive timeframe for setting 16-Gbps Fibre Channel standards. If vendors were able to develop a standard by late 2010/early 2011, compliant products would be expected to start shipping in 2012.

InformationWeek has published an in-depth report on private cloud computing. Download the report here (registration required).