The FCIA recently hosted a webcast “Fibre Channel Outlook – 2021 and Beyond” where FCIA experts from Broadcom, HPE and Marvell shred insights on the continued innovation of the Fibre Channel network protocol standard. Our FCIA experts were joined by industry analyst, Casey Quillin, founder and principal market analyst of Quillin Research, who will provided a fascinating perspective on storage networking trends. If you missed it, you can watch it on-demand at BrightTALK or on the FCIA YouTube channel.
We covered a lot of ground during the session and attendees asked some great questions. As promised, here are answer to then all.
Q: Are parallel rates (or quad rates) like 4x32G to create a 128GFC a reality or limited to some application? Are customers preferring native rates?
A: Both quad and serial speeds exist for many of the Fibre Channel speeds. There already is a 4×32 speed that gives 128GFC 4 lane parallel. T11 is currently working on a single lane 128GFC speed. Typically, parallel speeds are used for switch-to-switch links while the serial speeds are used by the end devices (host and storage).
Q: What is the roadmap for FC 128G?
A: For 128GFC, the standard should be stabilized in early 2021 with market availability in 2024.
Q: Is FICON a FC ULP?
A: Yes. It is defined by the FC-SB-6 T11 Standard.
Q: This slide says: “Lossless, congestion free systems.” As a statement it seems like wishful thinking…. otherwise how would you explain slow drain challenge? FC is well exposed to congestion. Maybe it should be reformulated.
A: Given its credit-based flow control mechanism, a Fibre Channel Fabric is designed to be lossless with minimal congestion. Congestion can still happen if a particular end point is oversubscribed or not processing things fast enough. To cover those types of cases the Fibre Channel standards committee is designing mechanisms to detect and recover from that type of network congestion.
Q: How good or bad are the latency metrics of FC-NVMe versus NVMe® over RoCE at similar FC and Ethernet speeds?
A: There have been various performance reports from FC-NVMe component and storage vendors focused on datacenter application-level performance advantages when using FC-NVMe, since these are vendor specific, we would encourage those interested to contact the vendors for further information.
Q: Any timeline in which 64G Optic module will be available in market?
A: The 64GFC Gen 7 specification has been completed in 2018 and many FC vendors have since released Gen 7 level products into the marketplace awaiting 64GFC optic availability. We expect to see optics emerging in the market during 2021. Please contact your FC equipment vendor for their specific product plans.
Q: is this a Broadcom marketing event?
A: Not at all, the FCIA and this event are supported by many FC vendors in the industry including partners and competitors all agreeing on the further advancement and awareness of the Fibre Channel Industry.
Q: Sorry if I missed it, do we have NVMe-oF™ speeds to compare to FC 32Gb/64Gb?
A: FC-NVMe runs on Fibre Channel speeds defined in INCITS T11, typically 16,32 and 64GFC.
Q: Any data on FC-NVMe ports vs RoCE / iWARP ports shipped to date?
A: We are not aware of data for adoption at the protocol level. Fibre Channel appears to have gained more market availability of fully qualified and supported enterprise storage solutions than RoCE or iWarp as is evidenced by operating system and storage vendor qualification guides.
Q: Would the FPIN functionality capability at an array level be down to the FC Adapter interconnect being used?
A: The array adapter would need to support FPIN recognition and switch registration in its hardware and firmware. Storage Array host side features are dependent on a combination of FC array adapter, device drivers and other factors. Every vendor will implement these features according to their own customer use cases and requirements.
Q: FPIN features: when will the storage vendors implement this on their arrays?
A: This is really a question for the individual array vendors. We would recommend contacting your vendor.
Q: Is FCoE really being used still? I keep hearing that no one is validating server/storage designs with FCoE anymore. Maybe there are other uses I’m unaware of.
A: FCoE is still in use in specialized such as blades and static rack solutions.
Q: On Slide #18, 1Q19 seems to show there was significant business for >32G gear. Unfortunately, that is completely wrong. 64G is something starting to appear end of 2020 only…where are you getting data from? Or maybe the legend on chart is just wrong….you say >32G when it should be >=32G?
A: Sorry for any confusion. The chart is intended to indicate 32GFC and greater and not greater than 32GFC. 32GFC has been available end to end in the SAN for a number of years and is shipping in increasing ramping volumes. 64GFC is expected to ship in 2021. We’ve updated the legend on slide #18 to better clarify.
Webcast attendees also had the opportunity to download the 2020 Fibre Channel Solutions Guide, packed with additional technical information to help you navigate the networking landscape.
