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iFCP vs FCIP?

Posted in General, Advisor - Steve by Steve Rogers

I recently was asked about iFPC and FCIP as competing technologies, and when are these two used?

In simple terms:
FCIP solutions encapsulate Fibre Channel packets and transport them via TCP/IP, which enables extend the reach Fibre Channel SANs via existing IP network infrstructures. This tunneling protocol that uses TCP/IP as the transport while keeping Fibre Channel services intact. FCIP relies on IP-based network services and on TCP/IP for congestion control and management. It also relies on both TCP/IP and Fibre Channel for data-error and data-loss recovery. FCIP gateways are used to interconnect via TCP/IP networks of any distance, using standard Gigabit Ethernet switches and routers.

With iFCP, the lower-layer Fibre Channel transport is replaced with TCP/IP and Gigabit Ethernet. iFCP enables existing Fibre Channel storage products and also allows multiple Fibre Channel SANs to be interconnected via TCP/IP networks of any distance, using standard Gigabit Ethernet switches and routers.

Deployment Considerations:
Centralized consolidation of Fibre Channel SANs via iFCP is a consideration for those environments where there is a heavy investment in both Fibre Channel SANs within a data center or an enterprise-wide IP network. Typically used in LAN or campus-wide implementations.

FCIP gateways connect to a existing standard Gigabit Ethernet/IP infrastructure and can be deployed over LANs, MANs, and WANs.

Steve

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 and is filed under General, Advisor - Steve. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “iFCP vs FCIP?”

  1. Matthew Says:
    March 23rd, 2006 at 2:36 am

    From your description above, it would seem that iFCP is more efficient than FCIP in terms of usefull data per IP packet. I assume this because from you description, iFCP removes FCIP headers and transports only the data portion of the FCP packet. Can you confirm this and are there any performance comparisons available that you know of? I understand that the two protocols have different end point considerations but if the performance is significantly different it could lend weight to one solution design over another.

    Thanks for your site :)

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