Resolve the war between FCoE and iSCSI network protocols (1)

How should we choose FCoE or iSCSI?

Do you still think that fiber channel (FC) is prepared for the data center, while iSCSI is prepared for SMB? We can tell you that this idea is outdated. With the increasing LAN speed, iSCSI has been applied in many data centers. Enterprises may adopt FCoE or iSCSI for the current product portfolio, future application requirements, organizational skills, budget, and other reasons. Next we will discuss how to choose FCoE or iSCSI.

First of all, I should declare that I am not a supplier representative or a cheerleader of any protocol. I will not favor FCoE, iSCSI, InfiniBand, SAS or any other protocol. I don't think this is a game.

Integration

The most important aspect of the FCoE discussion is not the protocol itself, but the fundamental transformation of Ethernet-based private storage network convergence. iSCSI started this trend almost 10 years ago, the Ethernet roadmap puts FCoE in the Cold palace.

Figure 1 Fusion

I think data and storage network convergence will have three key impacts:

1. Large-scale adoption of Intel-compatible processing architecture

2. Switch application processing to Open Systems (Windows and Unix)

3. IP addresses are widely used as interconnection protocols

None of these trends is surprising. Using the IP protocol, Intel-compatible open-system servers have dominated modern data centers. Given this dominant processing architecture, Ethernet Interconnection is a logical choice, and no other network protocols can occupy such a large market share.

We must consider factors driving network protocol convergence. After all, there are different protocols in storage, audio, video, WAN, cluster, and other fields, although server virtualization integration reduces the number of ports and cables required, it is still eager for better performance.

Figure 2 Impact of Ethernet-based data center convergence on servers, networks, and storage management personnel

If we converge over Ethernet, many changes will occur inside and outside the data center. server administrators will see the flexibility and mobility of virtual servers and blades, as well as the overall performance improvement, the focus of the storage administrator's work is to transfer the mysterious network protocol from management to data management Array Performance Management. The network administrator will be the main force of the transfer, and they will solve many headaches.

For more information about the two network protocols FCoE and iSCSI, see:

Parsing the war between the FCoE and iSCSI network protocols 2)

Parsing the war between the FCoE and iSCSI network protocols 3)