Storage Networking Architectures
Network Metrics
Network Throughput
What is max throughput for common networks…
Fibre Channel Approximate Maximum Throughput
Applies to Block Transfers - SAN
1Gb/s FC 100MB/s Full Duplex (rarely seen now)
2Gb/s FC 200MB/s Full Duplex (still widely used)
4Gb/s FC 400MB/s Full Duplex (most commonly deployed today)
8Gb/s FC 800MB/s Full Duplex (supported by most FC vendors)
FC is always Full Duplex
Ethernet Approximate Maximum Throughput
Applies to both File Transfers - NAS (CIFS, NFS) &
Block Transfers - SAN (iSCSI)
10Base-T Approx 1MB/s (no longer used, half duplex only)
100Base-T Approx 10MB/s (too slow for most applications)
Gigabit Ethernet Approx 100MB/s (commonly used for Enterprise NAS & iSCSI)
10 Gigabit Ethernet Approx 1000MB/s (next generation, but is available today)
Ethernet is usually Full Duplex, but can be misconfigured as Half Duplex
When we measure the link rate, we use bits per second, the abbreviation is a
lower case ‘b’
1Gb/s is one gigabit per second.
When we measure the bandwidth or throughput, transfer rate, we use bytes
per second, the abbreviation is an upper case ‘B’
1MB/s is one megabyte per second.