Over at the Register there’s an article on a report about the Future of Fibre Channel in the Data Centre (British spellings of course). The trends being spotted now are duofold.
- Internal disks on storage arrays are moving to Serial Attached Storage (SAS) whose interface speeds continue on a blistering increase with each new generation.
- Optical Fibre Channel interconnects are deemed too difficult to manage along with the attendant switches and directors. Between software and hardware far too much expertise is required or needs to be added to existing Data Center staffing.
Following these trends to their logical conclusions a recent development called Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) us usurping the mindshare that FC over fibre optics once had. Costs and expertise have dictated the cheaper less complicated interface be used wherever and whenever possible. The prediction now is that Serial Attached Storage will be the next big thing, the next wave of migrations within the Data Center. The possibilities extend to SAS over Ethernet as the eventual target of these consolidations and migrations. So FCoE may be a bridge to SASoE. As Data Center migrations go, it may be the case new installs adopt the new technology with older FC based systems eventually being left to migrate when they reach their operational lifespan (10 years for a Data Center hardware/software combo?).
Carpet Bomberz Inc. 