Fibre Channel SAN Extension over IP FCIP & iFCP Comparison
FCIP and iFCP
FCIP: One storage fabric stretched over multiple sites
iFCP: Two or more autonomous storage fabrics – one at each site
SAN Fabric Site A
Class F, RSCNs Storage Traffic
IP Network
Site B
• Class F, Name Server, RSCNs, etc all compete with storage traffic for bandwidth
• All sites must rely on principal switch at one remote site
Site A
SAN Fabric
SAN Fabric #1
IP Network
Site B
• Class F, Name Server, RSCNs all contained within each site
• iSNS protocol transfers name server and RSCNs between fabrics
• One principal switch at each site
FCIP creates one storage fabric You need to make sure you have sufficient bandwidth to cope with all of the fabric traffic as well as all of the storage traffic.
iFCP all of the fabric traffic stays local. The only thing that goes remote is the iFCP sessions (device to device traffic)