Comments on: FCoE: Cables and the likes….

By: Thomas

Thomas — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:08:50 +0000

Can these cabels (Twinax) be used on Storage arrays? To be specific, can these be used on Clariion CX4s?
Thanks.
Thomas Pinto

By: Etherealmind

Etherealmind — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:05:31 +0000

The single biggest driver for Twinax cable is the low power. Becuase the signal is a radio wave (not an electrical pulse) the physical port consumes less than 4W. An equivalent 10GbE port needs 40W or more to keep the signal envelope in good condition. So 100 ports, plus the switching fabric and supporting silicon will need something like 6KVA, while twinax would use less than one. A data centre with 2500 10GbE ports will use one twelfth of the power for the networking compared to BaseT. game over.

By: About Restore » Blog Archive » Pondering Fibre Channel over Ethernet

About Restore » Blog Archive » Pondering Fibre Channel over Ethernet — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:14:00 +0000

[...] of the most interesting responses was this one by Nigel Poulton where he explains the infrastructure required for FCoE.Â He goes into great [...]

By: Kash Shaikh

Kash Shaikh — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:34:08 +0000

All,
Good discussion, if you’d like to hear from someone who is using FCoE in real life production environment, pls join us for a live Internet TV broadcast featuring our special guest Derek Masseth, Sr Director of IT at the University of Arizona..
We introduced Nexus 5000 in March 2008. Nexus 5000 was industry’s first FCoE Switch. We now have shipped Nexus 5000 to more than 1000 customers.35% of the systems were shipped with FCoE licenses.
Derek is one of our Nexus customer who is taking advantage of the benefits offered by FCoE at the server access layer.
We will also be sharing Cisco’s incremental approach to FCoE…
When: Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 10:00-11:00 a.m. PDT
Where: The broadcast can be accessed at the URL below. No registration required.
http://tools.cisco.com/cmn/jsp/index.jsp?id=90342

By: Nigel Poulton

Nigel Poulton — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:42:06 +0000

Thanks all for the comments and additions to the discussion

Julie,

Thanks for stopping by. I will put something together on CNAs, although it will be hard to give the detail as well as keep it short enough for a blog post.

Nigel

By: Amnon

Amnon — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:30:46 +0000

Very nice summary on the physical layer of FCoE. Just wanted to highlight that for the twinax cables there are 2 main variants – passive cables and active cables. Both options right now are limited to 5m. The capability to use twinax (which is far cheaper right now compared to optical transceiver) depends on both the switch and the CNA capabilities. Be sure to validate before you make your decision what is supported.

By: Julie Herd Goodman

Julie Herd Goodman — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:59:32 +0000

Nigel, nice job on this overview. It’s quick enough for a blog post, but with enough details to start to really understand what’s going on. I looking forward to seeing what you write covering CNA’s, because that is where I start to lose my grip on what’s happening and where with FCOE.

By: Stuart Miniman

Stuart Miniman — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:44:23 +0000

Don’t dismiss Cat 6 cabling for 10Gb. 10GBase-T solutions aren’t available for FCoE yet, but are showing up for other 10Gb solutions and should be an option in the future. I just did an update on my blog site which I hope adds to the discussion.

By: Matt Simmons

Matt Simmons — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:36:54 +0000

I’ve said for a long time that it didn’t matter whether the winner ended up being FC or FCoE (or even iSCSI), in a couple of generations, we’re all going to be running on optical cables. The theoretical throughput is (AFAIK) still undecided, but it’s well above even the Tb/s that Don Lee requested from the Ethernet Alliance.