Fiber Channel Explained: Uses and Benefits in Storage Networking

[johny899]

Have you ever wondered how big organizations are capable of quickly transferring large amounts of data without any issues?This is where Fiber Channel (FC) would be helpful to be aware of. If you are familiar with the term but are not exactly sure what it means, let me explain briefly.

What is Fiber Channel?​

Fiber Channel is a high-speed network for connecting servers and storage hardware. You could think of FC as a super-fast highway for data. But unlike a common network, Fiber Channel was designed for its speed and reliability, which is important for applications that are time sensitive and can't be waiting to send or receive data.

I remember my first Fiber Channel deployment. I was a bit confused as there were so many cables but that was only because I didn't know what I was doing. You can understand how it works when you know the fundamentals. Servers and storage and switches communicate back and forth as we are transferring data quickly and securely.

How Fiber Channel Works​

Fiber Channel is mostly running on a storage area network (SAN). The server connects to the storage via either FC switches or direct cable, which allows the server and storage to both send request for data back and forth at the same time.

Here’s the rationale for choosing Fiber Channel:

• Quick: It can operate at 16 or 32 or 64 Gbps

• Reliable: It eliminates the risk of lost and corrupted data.

• Scalable: You may add more storage or servers and it won’t impact performance.

Have a repository of large data sets that you need to get your hands on? Transferring it over a regular network can be way longer than you planned. Fibre Channel does it in almost real-time.

Why Fiber Channel?​

You’re probably thinking: “Why don’t we just go Ethernet?” .Ethernet is good for text-book, average stuff but when lots of storage and data is involved, fiber gets the nod. Fiber Channel gives dedicated speed with the overheads keeping higher performance your goal. This is consistent in use within data centers, banks and with your cloud providers.

How Organizations Use It​

Organizations are using Fiber Channel to support mission-critical applications, such as databases, virtual machines and backups. It keeps the data moving (beside down time) and have personally seen a dozen or so large companies use Fiber Channel for hundreds of coders to storage arrays without any problems—amazing!

Conclusion​

To sum up, Fiber Channel is a fast and reliable way to transfer volumes of data. It enables large companies to run heavy applications and transfer large amounts of data without latency. The next time you wonder how large databases and cloud services operate so seamlessly, Fiber Channel is often the answer.