Storage Networking Architectures
Storage Transport Protocols
Why Fibre Channel?
• Fibre Channel “carries”, or encapsulates, other
communication protocols:
•SCSI-3 •IP •FC-VI
•FICON •HiPPI •FC-AV
•FC-AE
• Fibre Channel can carry multiple protocols
simultaneously to support a variety of applications
SCSI-3
IP
VI
Fibre Channel
FICON
The multi-protocol capabilities of Fibre Channel enable SANs to meet the
needs of diverse applications:
SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) provides a command set for
reading and writing data to and from storage devices. Most Fibre
Channel implementations use the serial SCSI-3 protocol, allowing the
use of inexpensive SCSI disks in SANs.
ESCON (Enterprise Systems Connection) is a storage interconnect used
in mainframe enterprise computing environments. FICON (Fibre
Connector) allows ESCON assets to be used within a Fibre Channel
SAN infrastructure.