Fibre Channel Over Ethernet in the Data Center: An Introduction

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a newly proposed standard that is being developed by INCITS T11. The FCoE protocol specification maps Fibre Channel natively over Ethernet and is independent of the Ethernet forwarding scheme. It allows an evolutionary approach towards I/O consolidation by preserving all Fibre Channel constructs, maintaining the same latency, security, and traffic management attributes of FC while preserving investments in FC tools, training, and SANs. FCoE recognizes FC as the dominant storage protocol in the data center while giving customers a viable I/O consolidation solution. FCoE simplifies customer environments by using Ethernet and allowing the industry to avoid creating another, separate protocol for I/O consolidation.