Re: iFCP

["Mark A. Carlson" <mark.carlson@sun.com>]

IMHO, the most interesting thing about this proposal is that
"SAN"s can be had without a single FC switch anywhere. This
is quite different from bridging FC switch based SANs over
IP.

All the n*n stuff can happen in IP based switches without 
changing hosts or devices (in theory ;-). The "edge connects"
do the conversion for hosts and devices.

-- mark

"KRUEGER,MARJORIE (HP-Roseville,ex1)" wrote:
> 
> With my HP hat off :-)
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: John Hufferd [mailto:hufferd@us.ibm.com]
> > Sent: Monday, November 20, 2000 5:51 PM
> > To: ips@ece.cmu.edu
> > Subject: iFCP
> ..snip..
> > In this FC SAN to FC SAN environment, the thing that I find  interesting
> is
> > that the iFCP protocol will Encapsulate each FC "Session" separately
> > instead of Tunneling all the "Sessions" that arrive on a single FC cable
> to
> > a single remote Target.  This means that Each "Session" can
> > be individually routed by normal IP routing techniques.
> >
> > The reason I think this is interesting is that SAN Edge
> > connect Devices (Gateways) when used with Tunneling requires (n*(n-1))
> Edge
> > Connects, where n is the number of SANs being interconnected.  That is, 2
> SAN
> > needs 2  Edge Connects (ECs), 3 SANs need 6 ECs, 4 SANs need 12 ECs, 5
> need
> > 20 ECs, etc.  The Encapsulation techniques of iFCP, on the other
> > hand, require only "n"  ECs.  (A significant difference).   This maybe
> very
> > useful for companies that have a lot of distributed FC based systems.
> 
> Please explain how you've arrived at this notion of tunneling (FCoverIP)
> requiring n*(n-1) "edge connects" and what you mean by "edge connects".
> 
> Implementation experience is a pair of "edge devices" (FCoverIP switching
> devices) for a WAN link between remote SANs.  This is a proximity
> requirement only - ie, you have to have a physical device at a location to
> connect to the local physical wiring(s).  So if there are several SANs at a
> physical location, it still requires only one FCoverIP device (with N FC
> ports) to handle the WAN connection.
> 
> Marjorie Krueger
> Networked Storage Architecture
> Hewlett-Packard Storage Organization
> tel: +1 916 785 2656
> fax: +1 916 785 0391
> email: marjorie_krueger@hp.com