lost+found

A Fibre Channel Primer: Part 1

W. Curtis Preston

SANs certainly qualify as leading-edge technology -- perhaps even bleeding edge. However, Fibre Channel has been around for years. Many people seem to be confused about Fibre Channel as it relates to SANs, which may be why I received so many emails after my last column "Why SANs?" Readers have heard about SANs and the benefits they provide, but the Fibre Channel technology upon which they are based is often a mystery. Perhaps the reason that Fibre Channel is unknown is that, although its been around for a long time, you didn't need to know much about it. For most people, Fibre Channel meant plugging in a Fibre Channel disk to a host, and that was the end of it. They didn't know that they were creating a point-to-point Fibre Channel network, or that they were creating an arbitrated loop when they chained a few storage arrays together on the back of a server.

It's not necessary to know a lot about Fibre Channel when using a small network. However, in SAN-land, not knowing Fibre Channel can increase your confusion, frustration, and the cost of the project.

This month's column was originally going to cover the different vendors that manufacture and sell SAN equipment, but I decided instead to spend a little time explaining the basics of Fibre Channel and its topologies. The next thing I know, I had enough for two columns! I hope you enjoy part 1 of this Fibre Channel primer.

Why Fibre Channel?

The purpose of Fibre Channel was to remove the performance barriers of legacy LANs.