Upgrading Your Storage-Area Network to 8 Gbp Fiber Channel

TThe transition to 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) hardware in storage-area networks (SANs) is well underway. Also mentioned in this TechTarget report, this upgrade could be the replacement of existing 1 Gbps, 2 Gbps or 4 Gbps Fibre Channel hardware, or the addition of 8 Gbps ports and devices.

“‘Upgrade the core first — you don’t have to have an end-to-end 8 Gbps infrastructure to justify the project,’ said Erik Pounds, product marketing manager at Brocade Communications Systems Inc. ‘The core needs to support bursting rates above what the edge ‘steady state’ throughput rates are.’
P>””8 Gbps core switches or director switches can enable better performance for 4 Gbps at the edge, as well as support oversubscription in a 4 Gbps fabric. ‘8 Gbps performance allows heavy consolidation and more density at the core, up to hundreds of wire-speed ports. This enables more scalability of the fabric with reduced ISL stress, resulting in lower fabric congestion,’ Pounds said.”

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