The need for Fibre Channel expertise at some of the world’s most successful businesses is greater than ever, creating a multitude of career opportunities for those who choose to expand their resume with Fibre Channel technical proficiency. This was the topic of our recent FCIA webcast “Advance Your Career with Fibre Channel Knowledge” where Fibre Channel experts, Mark Jones and Mike Klempa, shared their personal career experiences with Fibre Channel and highlighted all the training resources available on Fibre Channel. The audience at our live webcast asked several interesting questions. Here are answers to them from our presenters.
Q. Any idea on how NVMe-oF™ for Fibre Channel works vs. RoCE?
A. Since the FC-NVMe T11 standard for mapping Fibre Channel to NVMe over Fabrics was completed, we have seen virtually every major All Flash storage array vendor offer the feature in production. In comparison, NVMe-oF using RoCE has not been implemented widely in the enterprise storage array market, from this measure Fibre Channel appears to be the winner.
Q. Do you have a link for UNH-IOL presentations?
A. A great tutorial on FC can be found here – UNH-IOL Fibre Channel Tutorial | InterOperability Laboratory. I would encourage anyone interested in specification compliance that enables interoperability to poke around Fibre Channel Test Plans | InterOperability Laboratory (unh.edu)
Q. How essential is it to have access to associated products to learn and pass certification exams?
A. No, these are all-encompassing training modules! Just follow the links in our slides!
Q. Can you provide more details on the role Fibre Channel is playing with Kubernetes?
A. The repatriation of cloud-based workloads back to on premises within corporate datacenters is a growing trend due to data security and performance concerns. Traditional Fibre Channel storage solutions have been proven to solve these concerns. Linux based Kubernetes distributions such as Openshift and Rancher support Fibre Channel within the distribution. Most storage array vendors also support Fibre Channel in their Kubernetes CSI management packages, making persistent storage for containers using Fibre Channel simple to deploy and manage. For more information see the FCIA BrightTalk webcast “Kubernetes and Fibre Channel: A Compelling Case.”
Q. How many standards bodies are involved in Fibre Channel?
A. T11 creates the FC specification, and has a few subgroups but the most relevant ones are 11.2 (physical variants, covering the optical and electrical signaling of FC devices) and 11.3 create the FC transmission schemes, or protocols, that relate to transmitting FC data.
T11 members often collaborate with other industry organizations such as SNIA, OIF, CMIS, and IEEE 802.3 to make sure all specs are technically relevant, feasible, and complete.
Don’t forget that the FCIA has created a wide range of Fibre Channel educational resources. Please visit our webcast library or our YouTube Channel to watch them all.
