>>>What is fiber channel connectivity?<<<
In a nutshell, Fiber Channel increases the allowable distance between connected components from 85 ft (SCSI) to over 30,000 ft (Fiber Channel), while increasing data transfer approximately 5 times to around 100 MB/sec. It is ideal for enterprise storage networks where servers can be backed-up across corporate campuses, sometimes with miles separating the components.
emc.com
These guys claim they can achieve 200 MB/sec.
amdahl.com
"With Fibre Channel technology, the LVS 4500 Storage Systems is capable of transfer rates up to 200MB/sec, a significant increase in throughput performance. In addition, the distance between host and storage devices is greatly lengthened by the Fibre Channel offering. The current SCSI standard is 85 feet while the Fibre Channel standard is up to 10 kilometers or 6 miles. Host and data storage can now be separated by significant distances for remote copy facilities and disaster recovery.
By implementing Fibre Channel technology, the number of attached devices also increases from 16 to as many as 126 nodes on most networks. Very large host/storage systems can now be built, adding even more flexibility to the LVS 4500 Storage Systems. This provides easy, flexible configuration of large "data farms" in support of data warehouses, OLTP, and decision support systems. As a result of its extended distance and high throughput, Fibre Channel is also ideal for configuring high-availability, high-performance server clusters in the UNIX and Windows NT environments." |
