Blessay: FCoE Is JUST a Transition Technology

Chris Evans believes that “FCoE” will rule the world. Hah. I believe it’s just a trans­ition tech­no­logy that drags Storage out of it’s closed, pro­pri­et­ary mind­set into the open col­lab­or­at­ive world. Data Networks can eas­ily adapt.

FCoE Isn’t a Replacement for Infiniband, It’s a Cheaper Copy That Customers Will Buy

There is some mis­con­cep­tion by many in the stor­age industry that FCoE is some type of replace­ment for Infiniband. My view is that FCoE is cheaper, dumber but MARKETABLE alternative.

Why Does iSCSI Use TCP Instead of IP ?

The iSCSI pro­tocol car­ries block data from stor­age array to server. Typically, that is inside a data centre where loss is not a prob­lem. So why use TCP and have all that overhead ?

DCB, CEE or DCE ? Whose Term Is Best ?

FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) is com­ing to your data centre. The prob­lem is that FCoE doesn’t work prop­erly on ordin­ary eth­er­net switches. What do I mean by “prop­erly” ? We need new stand­ards to let it reach its poten­tial but there are too many acronyms.

Storage: Emulex Silicon Will Have iSCSI, TOE, FCoE, RDMA & iWarp in a Single Chip

Buried in this art­icle from the Register is apara­graph detail­ing Emulex Gen2 chip that does all stor­age vir­tu­al­isa­tion in a single chip. The FC boost­ers will be unhappy, they will have to compete.

The Case Against FCoE and Fibrechannel — a Reasonably Complete View

A num­ber of stor­age blog­gers have been ques­tion­ing the rel­ev­ance of FCoE and why would you bother with it. Given the size of mar­ket­ing budgets push­ing FCoE and the real­ity dis­tor­tion this gen­er­ates, lets look at the case AGAINST FCoE.

Network Fabric:TRILL for Server and Network People. Welcome RBridges

TRILL is a key net­work tech­no­logy for enabling Cloud Computing by allow­ing for bet­ter migra­tions of VM’s, and bet­ter util­isa­tion of the net­work switch­ing fab­ric and much improved sta­bil­ity of the Data Centre Server Fabric.

FCoE and the Return of Spanning Tree

One of the most amus­ing parts about Fibre Channel over Ethernet(FCoE) is that Spanning Tree is mak­ing a tri­umphant comeback. And I am talk­ing a Roman style parade after the gates to the city have been built and the streets lined with gold.