[geeks] FibreChannel or FDDI

[b4 at gewt.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Meredith" <very at zonky.org>
To: geeks at sunhelp.org
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 12:01:37 PM
Subject: Re: [geeks] FibreChannel or FDDI

On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:08:45 +0000 (UTC), b4 at gewt.net wrote:
> I can get some FDDI cards + necessary hardware (PCI) for the two, and
> I was wondering if that would be slower than iSCSI over gigE or if
> it'd be equal/faster...I'm leaning towards equal due to less overhead
> and it being a dedicated network for it.

Ignoring the disks, FDDI is going to be quite a bit slower than
1000Mbps ethernet given that it's more like 100Mbps. Compared to
100Mbps ethernet and given your usage case, FDDI is going to be
somewhat better (something like 10-25% if I can remember the
benchmarks right).

Ah.

> I also have a couple FibreChannel cards (64-bit/66MHz I think...other
> systems don't have the full length slots so I know i'd be limited
> speed-wise there).  Despite the speed decrease due to
> backwards-compat...would it be equal, faster, or slower than my
> current setup? If yes, would it be possible to do point-to-point
> between the two systems and have System2 access disks on System1?

It should be faster than 1000Mbps even if you've managed to pick up
something as ancient as 1GFC, although running iSCSI over IP over FC is
sufficiently weird that you might just tickle a bug or two.

If I can convince the FC card to shove the disk over FC I can bypass IP and iSCSI. ;)

However, I don't have full-length slots in the system so that's gonna be an issue... 

Should be no problem with point-to-point.

I would not need a switch, correct?
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