News & Analysis
Comment
docdivakar
@Bert22306: good points... Ethernet is well-entrenched in Datacenters because of ...
chanj
It's not a surprise to see the decline of Fiber Channel if FCoE devices becomes ...
Fibre Channel decline predicted for 2014
Rick Merritt
9/28/2011 7:20 PM EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Fibre Channel, by far the leading server storage interconnect, will decline starting in 2014 as versions of 10 Gbit/s Ethernet come on strong, according to a new report. That same year 10G Ethernet will surpass Gbit Ethernet in unit shipments, it predicts.
Fibre Channel shipments will peak at slightly more than four million ports in 2013, the report said. "Fibre Channel will clearly continue to be the leader for block-based network storage for years to come, but after 2015 the race is on," said Kimball Brown, a senior analyst at Lightcounting LLC and author of the report.
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) will be by far the strongest runner in that race, but 10Gbit versions of iSCSI will also gain traction, the report predicts. FCoE will appeal to users of Fibre Channel who are already comfortable with fiber-based networks, while iSCSI is predominantly used by small- and medium-sized companies using Category 5/6A copper cabling, the report said.
Dell is among the few strong backers for iSCSI. Cisco currently is the only vendor with an end-to-end offering of FCoE products, and it is fairly new to the server business, Brown said.
Click on image to enlarge.
One challenge for FCoE vendors is the technology's lack of a standard for multi-hop switches. Cisco offers its own version of FCoE forwarding today, and a standard that would help other vendors catch up is still in the works, Brown said.
Adoption of storage interconnects based on the 10GBase-T standard for copper cables will be relatively slow, Brown predicts. Their bit error rate is relatively high compared to the alternatives, but it should improve in future generations of products, he said.
Meanwhile, 10G Ethernet is starting to gain traction and could exceed 15 million units in 2015, surpassing GbE.
The road map for Ethernet forks to some extent with the 10G generation. With its Romley-class servers, Intel will provide options for several flavors of Ethernet including GbE, Infiniband or versions of 10GE using 10GBase-T copper of SFP+ optical links. Some of the 10GE chips will support FCoE, and others will support iSCSI.
Click on image to enlarge.
|
|
|
|
|
Bert22306
9/28/2011 8:32 PM EDT
The name Ethernet trumps all. I've been following this trend since the early 1990s. First, when speed was increased to 100 Mb/s, Ethernet easily won out over other LAN standards, like Token Ring, 100VG, FDDI, and ATM, in cases where ATM was used for LAN service.
Then, with speeds increased to 10 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s, and then 100 Gb/s and more coming, it started displacing SONET even in the WAN.
Should anyone be surprised if it takes over the data center next? I'm not.
One of the reasons for the success of Ethernet is that only the name and the frame format remain unchanged. The topology has changed with the times, always adopting the good ideas from the other standards, bypassing the mistakes of these others, and leaving behind its own initial handicaps (like the CSMA/CD protocol, now only used, if at all, in local links from host to switch).
Another significant reason for its success is that it is a very compatible with Internet Protocols, where some of the others (notably ATM) were not. With the success of IP came a boost to Ethernet.
And perhaps a third reason is that most networking people realised that throwing speed at a problem, when speed is cheap, is so much easier and more effective than designing complicated reservation and prioritization protocols on slower networks.
Sign in to Reply
docdivakar
9/30/2011 4:59 PM EDT
@Bert22306: good points... Ethernet is well-entrenched in Datacenters because of its compatibility with older generations (10/100/1000Base) of which using the same form factor for connectivity has been an important feature. There will be other niche applications in the datacenters / HPC clusters like InfiniBand but they will always be limited in their adoption.
@RickMerrit: regarding lack of standards for multihop FCoE switches, this may be some what of an issue but vendors like Cisco have approached this by seggregating fiber and copper interconnect applications based on the topology of deployments in Datacenters. There are augmenting hardware available now to address this issue but cost additions are not attractive.
MP Divakar
Sign in to Reply
chanj
9/29/2011 3:31 PM EDT
It's not a surprise to see the decline of Fiber Channel if FCoE devices becomes popular and iSCSI is picking up momentum. The prediction would be right if iSCSI gets a more wide spread adaption. To accomplish it, cost/ benefit between FCoE and iSCSI will need to be considered. What's the benefit of iSCSI over FCoE's?
Sign in to Reply