Fibre Channel SAN Extension over IP
FCIP & iFCP Comparison
FCIP and iFCP
FCIP: WAN disruptions result iFCP: WAN disruptions result in
in fabric reconfiguration device de-registration
iFCP Sessions
SAN
Class F, RSCNs
SAN
SAN SAN
Fabric Storage Traffic Fabric
Fabric #1
IP Network
Fabric #2
9 9
Temporary outage Temporary outage
in WAN Link in WAN Link
Site A
Site B
Site A Site B
• Temporary outage in WAN results in • Temporary outage in WAN results in
destructive fabric reconfiguration as non-disruptive name server de-
fabrics segment into two registration for inaccessible devices
• Recovery of the WAN link results in • Recovery of the WAN causes quick
a second disruptive fabric registration of the devices
reconfiguration to rejoin fabrics
FCIP
If we get a wide area network failure, this would force fabric segmentation
To speed up the process it is recommended that you should always configure
static domain ID’s
iFCP
If we get wide area disruption there are no local rebuilds, no local disruption.
The only traffic that will be affected is the session traffic going over the IP
network.