In the wake of the anomaly of different separate networks for different workloads (OLTP, Business Intelligence, High Performance Computing, Web 2.0 etc.) fierce debate has raged over the future of interconnects creating a major uncertainty and headache for IT decision-makers:

Q. Will Fibre Channel adoption outpace iSCSI deployments or will new IP SAN developments make it robust and become a viable alternative for high end storage solutions as well?
Q. Should Fibre Channel SANs be deployed throughout the organization now, believing that Fibre Channel has a long-term future or will all storage-host interconnection eventually go to iSCSI?

<!--more-->FCoE enables FC traffic to run over Ethernet with no performance degradation and without requiring any changes to the FC frame. It supports SAN management domains by maintaining logical FC SANs across Ethernet. Since FCoE allows a direct mapping of FC over Ethernet, it enables FC to run over Ethernet with no (or minimal) changes to drivers, SW stacks, and management tools.

<img src="http://localhost/eGroup/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/fcoe.jpg" alt="" width="504" height="318" />

With Fibre Channel over Ethernet, IT organizations can incorporate FCoE-aware Ethernet switches into the access layer and converged network adapters or server adapters with an FCoE initiator at the host layer. This simplifies the network topology so that only a single pair of adapters and a single pair of network cables are needed to connect each server to both the Ethernet and the Fibre Channel networks. The FCoE-aware switches separate LAN and SAN traffic, providing seamless connectivity to existing storage systems.

<img src="http://localhost/eGroup/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/interconnect-chart.jpg" alt="" width="457" height="134" />

FCoE is intended primarily as a way to unify FC and Ethernet networks, but it may also have an impact on other technologies being used in enterprise SANs and data centers.