Fibre channel san storage overview tutorial video youtube. Sans are primarily used to enhance accessibility of storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries, to servers so that the devices appear to the operating system as locallyattached devices. Providing highly secure, full line rate data encryption, our platforms are also the ideal solution for securing data in transit between sans at 1, 2 or 4 gbps. Fibre channelbased networks support three types of base topologies. But fibre channel also incorporates the best of the network as fc allows multiple protocol support, such as scsi, ip, ficon.
These components can be further broken down into the following key elements. Fc is a mature technology having been approved and continually moderated by the american national standards institute ansi t11x3 committee. A storage area network san or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, blocklevel data storage. Although fibre channel can be used as a generalpurpose network carrying atm, ip and other protocols, it has been. Today, fibre channel technology continues to be the data center standard for storage area networks and enterprise storage, with more than 80 percent market share. Virtual fabric capability supports logical partitioning of storage networks. Brocade 6505 and 6520 fibre channel switches release notes. Fibre channel storage area networks fc sans achieve high availability by building out two identical but physically separate networks commonly referred to as san a and san b also called fabric a and fabric b. Start small and scale ondemand, connecting thousands of applications to network storage, all while keeping the costs of ownership in check. Unification of networking and io channel data communications. New additions to the fibre channel specifications are continually being added.
San a storage area network is a network whose main purpose is to transfer data between storage. Introduction to storage area networks ibm redbooks. However, there are pros and cons to each approach that youll need to consider. Storage area network san ip storage networking arista. Ethernet media using an io protocol called iscsi is. Your data flow is only as fast as your network connectivity allows. Furthermore the authors describe the use of these techniques and how they. In a fibre channel arbitrated loop fcal see below, the hub is the faulttolerant center of the network to which servers and storage devices are connected. This guide will give an overall idea of how fc works and the underlying archtecture. Fc technology is essential for san implementation and establishes. Recently, technological innovations in both storage and networking are leading most organizations to converge their infrastructure onto an ethernet.
Supports native fibre channel at 2 gbps speeds at distances up to 7,500 km. A storage area network enables highperformance data transmission between multiple storage devices and servers. A storage area network san using a switched fabric and the fibre channel protocol. Switch in the more complex network environment of switched fibre see below, the switch is the center of the fabric, or infrastructure, of the network. Fibre channel protocols are organized in a layered architecture shown in figure 3.
A storagearea network san is a dedicated highspeed network or subnetwork that interconnects and presents shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers. All you need to know about storage area networks the amount of data of an average company doubles every year. Fibre channel fc is a high speed serial interface for connecting computers and storage systems. Fibre channel is the standard technology used to implement sans and other highend storage systems. It allows the interconnection of islands of fibre channel storage area networks through ipbased networks to form a unified storage area network. Ficon, and ip can be mapped to the fibre channel transport service. Fibre channel networks form a switched fabric because the switches in a network operate in unison as one big switch. Supports fibre channel routing fcr service for improved scalability and fault isolation requires an optional integrated routing license. The storage area network san infrastructure facilitates storage consolidation, data sharing, server clustering, lanfree and serverless backup across heterogeneous host server platforms. Hardware configuration guidelines libraries attached to. System requirements see, shared san data server system requirements for fibre channel for a complete list of supported platforms, hardware and software. In few words fibre channel combines the best of two worlds.
A wide range of storage area network san products and solutions that meet any customer requirements for performance, cost, scalability, manageability, and investment protection. On top of the fibre channelswitched protocol is often the serialized small computer systems interface scsi protocol, implemented in. What we would like to do is build a storage server with 6 ssd drives in raid 5 and make that appear to vmware as a fc storage array. You can search for, view, or download redbooks, redpapers, hints and tips. Its a channel transport that shares best of the characteristics of an ioi bus like scsi, as a consequence hosts and applications see the disk devices as locally attached storage. A big growth area in recent times has been in the use of storage area networks san and network attached storage nas. The best place to start when explaining storage area networks is with fibre channel, the original san protocol. Storage area network architecture with storage devices attached to servers through a network. Highly reliable and scalable, brocade fibre channel directors and switches deliver highperformance connectivity, while enabling low tco and fast roi. Very few data centres now run solely on ethernetmostly. Storage networks explained covers the fundaments, techniques and functions of storage networks such as disk subsystems, fibre channel san, internet scsi iscsi, fibre channel over ethernet fcoe, network attached storage nas, file systems, and storage virtualization. Fibre channel consistently delivers greater than five 9s or 99.
Storage area networking fundamentals global knowledge. A highspeed transport technology used to build storage area networks sans. This course focuses on the planning and implementation considerations associated with. A san typically is a dedicated network of storage devices not. For nearly a decade storage area networks sans have become mainstays. Pros and cons of fibre channel and ethernet storage.
Configure fibre channel san data server with direct. This article is intended to introduce you to the main concepts and features of fibre channel fc, the highspeed network technology and a relevant family of standards protocols for storage networking that was standardized in 1994. These technologies are fibre channel fc storage area networks sans, internet small computer system interface iscsibased ethernet attachment, and ethernetbased networkattached storage nas. These networks, unlike data center lan networks, are completely physically isolated from one another and have no knowledge of each other. It focuses on the techniques and the technologies that have evolved around slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. A san, or storage area network, is a dedicated network that is separate from lans. Ethernet networks are generally implemented when endusers need to transfer relatively small amounts of information over both local and global distances or in clustered, lowlatency compute environments. This protocol adds overhead to the data and then uses an 8,10 line code to encode the signal for transmission over the fiber. Fibre channel features following is a list of the major features that fibre channel provides. Generally speaking, a san uses fibre channel as the communication protocol.
A practical reference for implementing fibre channel and ip sans. There are no absolute rules on what you can and cant do when it comes to fibre channel and iscsi. Pointtopoint arbitrated loop switched fabric switched fabric further classified. Fibre channel and storage area networks 3 much as possible, while continuously and reliably providing access to data, for whoever needs it. Storage area network as a networked highspeed enterprise infrastructure nt. Storage area network as a service for cloud computing chapter 7. If you think the idea that data centres would abandon fibre channel for converged ethernet was pieinthesky, you are in good company. Currently the environment is using an hp fibre channel storage array which is about 67 years old and only has 12 10k disks. Fibre channel storage area networks are often completely redundant to ensure constant service and uncorrupted data. Ethernet for tcpip networks and fibre channel fc for storage area networks sans, each dedicated to specific purposes.
What is a fiber channel storage area network fc san. The chapter contains a detailed description of recent innovations in ipbased sans. The new fibre channel, ip, and virtualization initiatives covered in this work will enable customers to implement comprehensive shared storage solutions that reduce management overhead and cost. Basics and application of fibre channel san, nas, iscsi, infiniband and. In the past few decades the most pervasive storage media was a dedicated fibre channel network that connected compute to storage.
Fibre channel storage area network module 5 fibre channel storage area network fc san. Fibre channel protocol an overview sciencedirect topics. Fiber channel storage area networks explained network. Fibre channel solutions guide 2018 forword the fibre channel roadmap shared storage with nvmestorage fabric options with nvme improving high throughput applications performance with gen6 fibre channel fibre channel the most trusted fabric delivers nvmea look at fibre channels legacy and future storage forces download pdf. Configuring the fibre channel san data server with direct attached storage is supported with deduplication storage policy. Dell implements san solutions using fibre channel as the basis for the backend network. While it works fine it is quite slow because of the poor storage performance. Remove limitations on your storage investment and keep pace with storage innovations by modernizing your storage network with hpes dynamic endtoend solutions for. Storage area networks sans fill the need for highperformance, highavailability, scaleable storage solutions for the corporate enterprise. Today, most sans use fibre channel media, providing an anytoany connection for processors and storage on that network. Safenet fibre channel encryptors address the needs of large enterprises that have a requirement to secure sensitive information in flight within storage area networks sans. Storage area networks have historically tended to be rather proprietary and used dedicated.
A fiber channel storage area network fc san is a system that enables multiple servers to access network storage devices. If a node has multiple ports, it has a separate instance of the levels fc0 to fc. Thus, companies who own 1tb of data today will own selection from storage networks explained. Introduction to fibre channel storagefreak storage. Understanding fibre channel techlibrary juniper networks. Storage area network architectures technology white. Designing storage area networks, second edition, provides a practical roadmap through the everchanging landscape of san technology.
Ip storage technologies, sans over ip, fibre channel over. Fibre channel storage area networks are often completely redundant to ensure constant service and uncorrupted data without single points of failure. Generally, shared storage architectures divide into storage area networks sans and networkattached storage nas. Fibre channel topologies topology is the way of approach to connect devices to form a network. Ibm san solutions support virtualization, hybrid multicloud and big data requirements. The landscape of storagearea networks sans is changing, and the established boundaries of fibre channel vs. Introduction to fibre channel storage area networks san. More specifically, the term storage area network is often used to refer to a network with fiber channel technology.
For sans, the network infrastructure may be fibre channel or gigabit ethernet, and the type of storage data being transported is. Gen 5 and gen 6 fibre channel switches, directors and extension switches. Fibre channel storage fcs fibre channel is a gigabitspeed network technology used for. This edition applies to the products in the ibm storage area networks san portfolio. Because storage networking has evolved over the past two decades, the industry has settled on the basic storage networking technologies. Pdf storage area network fundamentals researchgate. This is the effort to get this unbelievable pdf designing storage area networks a practical reference for implementing fibre channel and ip sans 2nd edition. Fiber channel storage area networks explained free download as powerpoint presentation. Fibre channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks san in commercial data centers.
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