Fibre channel fc is a high speed serial interface for connecting computers and storage systems. San and networkattached storage nas are both networkbased storage solutions. This chapter describes fundamentals of storage area networks sans, their architectural elements interfaces, interconnects, and fabrics, technologies fibrechannelarbitrated loop transport. A fiber channel storage area network fc san is a system that enables multiple servers to access network storage devices.
Each node requires one or more ports to provide a physical interface for communicating with other nodes. Node port in fibre channel, devices such as hosts, storage and tape libraries are all referred to as nodes. Fibre channel fc is a highspeed data transfer protocol commonly running at 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 128 gigabit per second rates providing inorder, lossless delivery of raw block data. 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. The traditional networking technology employed in such storage area networks uses the fibre channel fc interface. This application supports about 0 protocols through a vast number of filters. Storage area network network switch computer network. Considerations when selecting a fabric for storage area networks the fibre channel industry association fcia is a mutual benefit nonprofit international organization of manufacturers, system integrators, developers, vendors, industry professionals and end users. Since the early 90s, networks have taken over more and moreresponsibilities.
Fibre channel is only one of the transmission technologies with which storage area networks. 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. Storage area networks and networkattached storage provide networked storage solutions. Fibre channel provides low latency and high availability, making it the ideal storage platform for many businesscritical applications. Internet protocol ip storage technologies, sans over ip, fibre channel over ip. The best place to start when explaining storage area networks is with fibre channel, the original san protocol. Fibre channel fundamentals tape library, tape backup software. A wide range of storage area network san products and solutions that meet any customer requirements for performance, cost, scalability, manageability, and investment protection. Thornburgh fibre channel for mass storage 20606 tom clark, designing storage. Introduction to storage area networks semantic scholar. With apple fibre channel solutions, affordability and ease of setup and use are ensured. Fibre channel hbas, hubs, switches, and fcscsi bridges are some of the. A san, or storage area network, is a dedicated network that is separate from lans.
A san typically uses fibre channel connectivity, while nas typically ties into to the network through a standard. Fibre channel san storage overview tutorial video youtube. A practical guide to san and nas security provides full descriptions of fibre channel security risks, san attacks and security assessment tools. These components can be further broken down into the following key. A storage area network enables highperformance data transmission between multiple storage devices and servers.
Fibre channel storage area network fc san lesson 2. Following that came higherspeed interface cards, which offerimproved stability paired with a lower tab by. If a node has multiple ports, it has a separate instance of the levels fc0 to fc. This drove the development of a serialized optical networking technology for storage systems, standardized in 1994 by ansi as fibre. Furthermore the authors describe the use of these techniques and how they. This edition applies to the products in the ibm storage area networks san portfolio. What is so valuable about this book is that it provides both an overview of various storage topics disk partitioning, raid, storage area networks, network attached storage, scsi, fibre channel, caching, etc. Fibre channelbased networks support three types of base topologies.
Increasingly this is leading to hybrid data centre fabrics, using the most. The fibre channel protocol fcp is one of the communication protocols designed to carry serial scsi3 data over an optical fiber network. This protocol adds overhead to the data and then uses an 8,10 line code to encode the signal for transmission over the fiber. Nowadays it is common to use fibre channel networks and to have a much higher number of devices connected to servers. To mitigate this risk, high availability solutions, like mpio, have been developed and now extended to virtualized environments. A storagearea network san is a dedicated highspeed network or subnetwork that interconnects and presents shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers. Sans, fibre channel, replication and networks david l. Generally speaking, a san uses fibre channel as the communication protocol. Fibre channel protocol an overview sciencedirect topics. Currently the environment is using an hp fibre channel storage array which is about 67 years old and only has 12 10k disks. Pointtopoint arbitrated loop switched fabric switched fabric further classified. Pdf storage area networks fundamentals researchgate.
Fibre channel is the standard technology used to implement sans and other highend storage systems. 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. Fibre channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks san in. Fc protocol stack fc addressing wwn addressing structure and organization of fc data fabric services fabric login types. Fibre channel protocols are organized in a layered architecture shown in figure 3. Fibre channel for sans free ebooks download ebookee. Introduction to storage area networks ibm redbooks. Fc technology is essential for san implementation and establishes connectivity according to requirements. Wireshark, originally known as ethereal, is probably the most famous open source packet sniffer and network analysis tool available. Mpio connectivity to fibre channel storage as more and more data is consolidated on storage area networks sans, the potential loss of access to storage resources is unacceptable.
Each node is a source or destination of information for one or more nodes. Remove limitations on your storage investment and keep pace with storage innovations by modernizing your storage network with hpes dynamic endtoend solutions for. Considerations selecting a fabric for storage area networks. Considerations when selecting a fabric for storage area networks. Fibre channel, and storage area networks, are focused at a optimizing the movement of data between server and storage systems, and b managing the data and the access to the data, so that communications are optimized as fibre channel and storage area networks. Fibre channel is the king of enterprise storage area network technologies. The standard contemplates three possible topologies for sans. In a large enterprise you will find hundreds of devices connected to a fibre channel network. The fibre channel standard was born from the need to have a reliable support for optical fiber connections between servers and storage disks, and is thought to replace the physical layer of scsi. Fibre channel topologies topology is the way of approach to connect devices to form a network.
A storage area network san or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, blocklevel data storage. Fc is a mature technology having been approved and continually moderated by the american national standards institute ansi t11x3 committee. Nas is a preferred storage solution that enables clients to. While email, printing, and small file transfers becamethe first network tasks, only recently have large, highspeed disk arraysbecome affordable. Fibre channel basics fast, affordable, easytoconfigure storage networks. 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. Functionalities such as traffic, protocol analysis, and packet dissector make it an extremely versatile tool for security experts, network engineers, and system administrators. What is a fiber channel storage area network fc san. New additions to the fibre channel specifications are continually being added.
Local area network designintroduction to storage area. On top of the fibre channelswitched protocol is often the serialized small computer systems interface scsi protocol, implemented in servers and san storage. Fiber channel network an overview sciencedirect topics. Fc technology is essential for san implementation and establishes. A san typically is a dedicated network of storage devices not. In fibre channel, devices such as hosts, storage and tape libraries are all. Dell implements san solutions using fibre channel as the basis for the backend network. This chapter introduces the concept of a storage area network, which has been regarded as the ultimate. 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. But fibre channel also incorporates the best of the network as fc allows multiple protocol support, such as scsi, ip, ficon. A nas is a single storage device that operates on data files, while a.
Ip storage technologies, sans over ip, fibre channel over. Pros and cons of fibre channel and ethernet storage. Underestimating storage area network san and fibre channel security risks could lead your customers to data loss. Network san, an expandable, highspeed network of storage devices, separate. There are two methods of connecting storage devices to networks, creating some confusion and nervousness in the storage area network san market. Products such as the dell emc line of fibre channel storage arrays provide excellent performance, reliability and functionality but can require specialized hardware and skills to. 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. The max number of devices for fcsw is 16,777,216 or 2 24 see table 12.
Fibre channel fc architecture during this lesson the following topics are covered. Technology brief fibre channel basics fibre channel is a set of advanced data transport standards that allow large amounts of data to be moved reliably at multigigabit speeds between computers, servers, disk. Whether you already a bit san savvy or youre a complete novice, heres the scoop on how sans save money, how to implement new technologies like data deduplication, iscsi, and fibre channel over ethernet, how to develop sans that will aid. It provides storage consolidation through file level data access and sharing. Storage area networks sans fill the need for highperformance, highavailability, scaleable storage solutions for the corporate enterprise. Nas provides the advantages of server consolidation by eliminating the need for multiple file servers. This chapter describes fundamentals of storage area networks sans, their architectural elements interfaces, interconnects, and fabrics, technologies fibrechannelarbitrated loop transport protocol, brocades configurations, infiniband switchedfabric architecture, crossroad systems with a storage router, virtual interface architecture, direct. Network analysis on a storage area network using wireshark. Pdf this chapter describes fundamentals of storage area networks sans. Introduction to fibre channel storagefreak storage. Storage area networks for dummies, 2 nd edition comes to the rescue with just what you need to know. While it works fine it is quite slow because of the poor storage performance.
A big growth area in recent times has been in the use of storage area networks san and network attached storage nas. Well start with a brief description of the major storage networking variations. Though the distance capability of fibre channel are impressive, fibre channel originally operated at speeds no faster than scsi 3, which meant that the real value of fibre channel in storage area networks was the distance benefit, not the speed. The chapter contains a detailed description of recent innovations in ipbased sans.
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. Introduction to fibre channel storage area networks san. In few words fibre channel combines the best of two worlds. The throughput of a fibre channel network can provide from 100 mbs to 1.
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