Unified Fabric

  • Traditional DCs
    • LAN and SAN fabric isolation
    • Server has 2 adapters  HBA for SAN and NIC for LAN
    • Kept completely seperate end-to-end
  • Unified Fabric DCs
    • Server 10G ethernet Converged Network Adapters ( CNAs ) for both LAN and SAN ( FCoE )
    • the LAN and SAN traffic is Unified on the same wire providing I/O consolidation

FCoE

 

  • FCoE is a protocol for transporting native FC frames over an 10G ethernet transport link.
  • Full FC frame is encapsulated onto a Jumbo Ethernet Frame.
  • FCoE requires lossless delivery.
  • FCoE requires a seperate FCoE VLAN from a normal VLAN traffic

FCoE Terminology

  • FIP – FCoE Initialisation Protocol
  • FCF – FCoE Forwarder ( switch )
    • accesswitch connected to the initiator
  • Enode ( server)
    • CNA running FCOE
  • Virtual Fibre Channel ( VFC ) Interface
  • Virtual Port Types
    • VN_Port
      • virtual node port
    • VF_Port
      • virtual facbric port
    • VE_Port
      • virtual extension port, switch to switch, multihop

Data Center Bridging

  • Data Center Briding ( DCB ) is a set of IEEE standards for Unified Fabrics
  • Priority Flow Control ( PFC )  ( 802.1Qbb )
    • Lossless delivery for selected CoS
  • Enhanced Traffic Selection ( ETS ) ( 8021.Qaz )
    • Bandwith Management and priority selection
  • These protocols combined: Datacenter Bridging Exchange