Fibre Channel And Ethernet Conversion Is Still A Distant Dream


Vendors love to talk about a converged storage network. But a unified infrastructure with Ethernet at its core is still a distant reality.

The goal behind such an infrastructure is to both save money with less expensive Ethernet switches and achieve improved speeds with 10-gigabit Ethernet ports.

But data center owners don’t appear to see an immediate need to spend the money in an era of tight IT budgets. And they don’t want to give up the familiar security and manageability of fibre channel.

Fibre channel over Ethernet technology was developed as the first step toward this networking conversion by companies such as Cisco Systems and Brocade Communications Systems. But even it is proving something of a half step.

According to Dave Stevens, CTO of Brocade, it is being deployed only at the perimeter of the network and not at the core. Data traffic from a server travels on a fibre channel over Ethernet pipe for about five feet until it reaches the first network access point, where it is split back into Ethernet and fibre channel, he says.

“It is changing the landscape for the first five feet” of the network, Stevens said at a Brocade Tech Day.

Oh well, back to the drawing board! The long sought convergence may take a new generation of network managers.