Cloud Computing: Is Fibre Channel the Answer to Growing Bandwidth Demands?

Grazed from StateTechMagazine. Author: Rick Cook.

Originally developed to connect storage area networks for high-performance computing, Fibre Channel dominates large data center architecture. As many as two-thirds of data centers use Fibre Channel in one if its incarnations. The most prevalent versions of Fibre Channel offer bandwidth of 8 or 16 gigabits per second. However, demand for bandwidth is rapidly growing, and faster iterations of Ethernet threaten to overtake Fibre Channel.

In response, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) this year released the Gen 6 Fibre Channel Physical Interface standard, which doubles speeds to 32Gbps. By combining channels, the new specification offers speeds up to 128Gbps, along with new features designed to increase reliability…

Data centers need bigger pipes to carry cloud computing and Big Data traffic. Cloud computing concentrates more data in fewer data centers, which increases the demand for bandwidth. Meanwhile, hypervirtualization has a similar effect because it concentrates more computing resources on fewer physical boxes…

Read more from the source @ http://www.statetechmagazine.com/article/2014/11/fibre-channel-answer-growing-bandwidth-demands