[SunRescue] [a little OT] Fibre channel q's...

[BrianMcCloskeycheckinmystyle at hotmail.com]

all fibre channel adapters do not work together. first generation fibre 
channel just used the scsi protocol over the fiber optic medium (e.g. the 
sparc storage arrays etc.). fc-al is fibre channel arbitrated loop and is a 
completely different protocol, more akin to ethernet than scsi (although i 
realize this is a bad example). this is what is used by the soc+ cards, 
gbics (gigabit interface converter) and the a5x00 arrays (previously sena or 
store edge network array). fc-al is much faster and more flexible than first 
generation fibre and allows for multiple hosts to access the same arrays 
either directly connected or through fibre hubs and switches. this is what 
vendors are using as the basis for storage area networks.

it is my experience that while the older soc cards and other first 
generation fibre channel stuff is getting cheaper, the newer fc-al devices 
are still very expensive. jni makes an sbus and pci version of sun's soc+ 
fc-al host adapters that are approved by sun and less than 25% of the cost 
of the sun adapters last time i checked. i have seen many more of our 
clients using the jni j-cor cards than i have seen using sun's soc+. if you 
are going to use the j-cor cards for failover though, i think there are some 
specific entries that need to made in /etc/system.


>From: Patrick Giagnocavo <a222 at redrose.net>
>Reply-To: rescue at sunhelp.org
>To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: [SunRescue] [a little OT] Fibre channel q's...
>Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 17:46:40 -0400
>
>Folks,
>
>please excuse this slightly off topic q.
>
>I often see "fibre channel" SCSI drives at VERY low prices; yet it is my
>understanding that FC is as fast or faster as other interfaces and has some
>other nice features too (like longer cable length).  I have seen some FC
>RAID cards for PCs at prices roughly equal to other RAID cards, so figure
>that that part would be about the same cost.  I don't know about SBUS cards
>for FC, RAID or otherwise.
>
>Do all FC interfaces work with each other?  I have seen "FC-AL" and other
>acronyms banged around.
>
>If someone has pointers where I can learn more I would be grateful.  Or 
>post
>a reply to the list.
>
>./patrick
>
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