What Is Fibre Channel?

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What Is Fibre Channel?

Fibre Channel (FC) is a specification of high-speed connections of electronic devices, which allows you to create a flexible configuration. FC has the properties of network technology, such as Ethernet, and tires, such as SCSI. It can be used in a network for connecting multiple systems and reservoirs. Any system can access any storage device. This means that the amount of data available within the enterprise as a whole increases. Speed ​​high: today Fibre Channel is capable of transmitting large amounts of data at a speed of 100 MB / s (full duplex - 200 MB / s). Specifications Fibre Channel protocol includes five levels, of which the first three are physical levels. Specifications these three levels approved as standard. Specifications levels 4 and 5 (FC3 and FC4) developed. Nevertheless allowed some freedom of interpretation, which is used by manufacturers to create specific functions of its own products and gain an advantage over competitors. This behavior leads manufacturers, in particular, to the fact that a single standard for the administration of FC-based infrastructure has not yet appeared. Fibre Channel can be used in five different classes of service and is being implemented in three topologies. • Class 1: Acknowledged Connection Service for large files and full bandwidth capacity; • Class 2: Acknowledged Connection Service for clusters, networks and OLTP; • Class 3: Unacknowledged Connection Service for storage, networking, broadband; • Class 4: Fractional Bandwith Service for real-time audio / video; • Class 5: Service for unicast video broadcast (one to many). To connect the storage subsystems and robotic tape libraries used Class 3, for synchronous replication of data in clusters applicable class 2. In a circuit topology implemented "point to point" , ring topology FC-AL (Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop) and Switched Fabric. Topology "point-to-point» Fibre Channel provides the easiest way to connect the two nodes. This delivers full bandwidth of 100 MB / s, but the scalability is limited. FC-AL is a ring topology like Token Ring and FDDI. It brings together up to 126 nodes in a single ring, and allows you to share 100 MB / s bandwidth. In addition, it provides good scalability of the system. Topology Switched Fabric permits the consolidation of 16 million units, and forms the basis for connecting the other rings and knots.