Fragments

(R)evolution in SAN

July 16th, 2008 | by Mitja Robas |

Ever feel confused with all the different protocols or emerging technologies around and plethora of devices available at your disposal? How to decide which technology to bet on the long run? Data Center and Storage Area Networks (SAN) being its part are no exception to that.

Large scale SANs are using FC protocol since it provides the required reliability and latency. iSCSI is typically embraced in smaller corporate environments. But which technology will prevail?
Remember the FDDI and Token Ring? Who was their contemporary and also succeeded them? Ethernet, of course.

Now Ethernet is also making its way into SANs in a form of FCoE. At first there will most definitely be implementations combining FC and Ethernet with FCoE being the transport protocol for Ethernet attached servers and FC being a transport protocol for storage systems. And there already are products like Cisco Nexus 5000.

But this is not a done deal and we’re yet to see the outcome of this competition.