Page 15 of 18 March 2001 Fibre Channel: Why another interface? Reduced cost of setting up a storage network. Eliminates an expensive component (the bridge) that requires reconfiguring or upgrading when new devices are added. Improved fault-tolerance. In a bridge-based network, the failure of the bridge renders all of the devices connected to it inaccessible, even when they are still functioning perfectly. When the devices on a network use native Fibre Channel, a failed device is simply bypassed. All of the other devices on the network remain available. The Fibre Channel advantage Although initially more expensive to implement than SCSI or traditional Ethernet, Fibre Channel becomes significantly more cost effective as more devices are added to the network. Unlike devices on a dedicated SCSI bus, storage devices on a Fibre Channel network can be shared among several servers. Adding more processing power does not necessarily mean adding more storage. Conversely, when more storage capacity or performance is needed, it is easy to add more tape drives or expand existing tape library systems. Fibre Channel’s flexible approach to connections between servers and devices results in major advances in system scalability, both for capacity and for performance. Unlike SCSI, where the fixed, one-to-one connections often require “downing the network” whenever a device is added or removed, the Fibre Channel interface provides true “hot swap” capability. Devices can frequently be added or removed from the network without disrupting the operation of the other devices. When a change is made to the network population, the network automatically reinitializes to reflect the changes. Unlike devices on an Ethernet network, the Fibre Channel protocol does not allow multiple devices to transmit data simultaneously. The arbitrated point-to-point connection between the transmitting device and the receiving device prevents the data collisions that limit the performance of Ethernet networks. Furthermore, adding devices to a Fibre Channel network does not increase processor overhead. Finally, with its bit error rate of 10^–12, or one bit-level error every 15 minutes, data transmission using Fibre Channel is significantly more reliable than data transmission over 10/100 BaseT Ethernet. This low error rate is especially important in data storage environments. Its scalability, flexibility, reliability, and high data transfer rates make FIbre Channel ideal for building the server-to-storage networks needed in today’s data-intensive computer environments. p1   p2   p3   p4   p5   p6   p7   p8   p9   p10   p11   p12   p13   p14   p15   p16   p17   p18